Soviet Luna Missions |
Soviet Luna Missions |
May 4 2006, 03:05 AM
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#1
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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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May 22 2006, 02:23 AM
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#2
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10256 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
The Luna 19 and 22 cameras were not great from a scientific point of view. The images were low resolution - Luna 19 aparently better at maybe 50 to 100 m/pixel at the nadir. Luna 22 a bit coarser. But I am not very knowledgeable about the instruments themselves - that's where Don knows much more.
The cameras scanned from horizon to horizon, and (as Shevchenko told me at Sternberg) from terminator to terminator. That may have been the capability, but it's not clear the full-length pans were ever obtained. Maybe only short sections were scanned. The images are fine under the spacecraft but extremely foreshortened at the horizon. Jeanna Rodionova sent me some scans of printed illustrations in which L22 images were reprojected into mapping geometry. I've done some of that too. There were only 5 panoramic images from Luna 19 and 10 from Luna 22. I think of this as experimental imaging, maybe to help design cameras for future planetary missions. It contributes nothing to lunar science and was not adequate for landing site selection. My big question was: what areas were imaged? (When you're making an atlas, everything looks like a map.) Shevchenko refused to let me copy anything - he showed me negatives of the L22 images, but nothing I didn't later find at Flagstaff and scan for Don. I had the impression they had never mapped coverage themselves. So began a quest - find everything that was published, project it into map form and locate it on a map to create coverage maps for these missions. Don helped me find a few images, I found some for him. We found about five images from each mission, some good, some awful. One I had to scan off a microfilm copy of Izvestiia in our library. There are published statements about the areas imaged by each mission online - they are incorrect. I think I posted those maps in a remote corner of this forum, if anyone cares to search for them. If I didn't I will soon. Needless to say, this is all going into my book, which is in the final stages of editing now. Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Guest_DonPMitchell_* |
May 22 2006, 05:46 AM
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#3
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