Soviet Luna Missions |
Soviet Luna Missions |
May 4 2006, 03:05 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 172 Joined: 17-March 06 Member No.: 709 |
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I thought that it was time to start up a discussion of what we know, or would like to know, about the Soviet Luna Missions. To start off, I have heard many a reference to the landing system utilized by the early landers, such as Luna 9. However, I have yet to find a report, or even a diagram, that shows the sequence of events, or such details as the air bags. If such references do not exist, I hope that some of the UMSF community have Russian contacts that could lead us to the source material before it ends up in the dust bin of history. In addition, I heard of an effort several years ago to obtain ALL of the imagery from Lunakhods 1 and 2. Does anyone know if that effort was able to secure that data? Also, as far as Lunas 15, 18 and 23, the sample-return missions that didn't quite make it home, are there any official reports "out there" that detail what actually occurred to those missions? Or will we have to wait for the high-resolution images from the LRO to determine their fates? Another Phil |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
May 16 2006, 01:23 AM
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Guests |
Yeah, we discussed a lot of this over at (of all places) the "I'm back from the Europa Focus Group meeting" slot. Luna 8's airbags were inflated just before the retrorocket started -- but one of them was punctured by a faultily installed bracket, and the resultant gas jet threw the craft into a tumble which its attitude-control jets were unable to overcome. So, as one of the Luna 9 changes, they arranged for its airbags to inflate after the retrorocket had started, on the grounds that its pointable nozzles could emit enough thrust to overcome any attitude disturbances caused by small leaks in the airbags.
The very detailed report on the 1963-68 Soviet lunar missions in the Sept. 2000 JBIS reveals that 1965 marked a "stairstep" progress by the Soviets toward a successful landing -- starting with Luna 5, every mission got a little farther than the last one, only to be stopped by a new malfunction whose existence had been concealed by the earlier occurrence of the previous one. |
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