Spacecraft Images Options

[Bob Shaw]

Don:

The Block-D stage is a great example of Soviet engineering, and is yet another survivor into the modern era. One aspect which has always struck me as being brilliantly simple was their method of ensuring that all the fuel in the toroidal tank could be emptied in flight - they simply tilted the tank so that the 'bottom' was at one point rather than in a line all around the base. So simple, and so effective (and the reason why Block-D diagrams, or at least the good ones, always look sorta squint!).

Bob Shaw

[dvandorn]

Don, you must be confused between the deep cores retrieved by the Apollo crews using the lunar surface drill (whose primary mission was to emplace heat flow probes) and the shallower core tube samples collected using what were called "Hoover tubes." The shorter core tubes were attached to extension handles and pounded into the ground using geology hammers.

The small core tubes gathered cores ranging between 15 cm up to 60 to 70 cm, depending on the number of roughly 30-cm tubes used. A single core sample collected material up to about 25-30 cm (though the lunar ground compacts so quickly that many of the core sample attempts only collected 15 to 20 cm of material). Starting with Apollo 12, the crews screwed two Hoover tubes together to collect "double core" samples, and Apollo 14 attempted one "triple core" sample, screwing three different core tubes together. However, most of the material from this triple core attempt slid out of the tube as it was extracted from the ground.

Even on the J missions, these Hoover tubes were used at remote sampling locations. One very good sample set from Apollo 17 was a double core tube driven by Jack Schmitt on the rim of Shorty Crater, which gave a nice sampling of the change-with-depth of the volcanic glass material that was staining the surface soil orange. It was this core tube sample that allowed post-mission analysis to definitively identify the glasses as fire-fountain remnants, and the range of coloration over the depth of the glass deposit (from orange near the top, to deep red in the middle, to dark black at the bottom) connected this glassy deposit to the darkening material in the so-called dark mantling unit.

So, even these shallow core tube samples played a pivotal role in the human exploration of the Moon that was Apollo.

-the other Doug

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Great photos Don, hadn't seen some of those before (probably Your personal ones) ... It's remains difficult to find good photos of Soviet-Russian era unmanned spacecraft ... You're right about the thermal blankets, a good example is to go to the NASA-KSC photo webpage and check the NewHorizons preparation from naked to completely 'packed' ...
Looking forward to another set of photos ...

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Don, you must be confused between the deep cores retrieved by the Apollo crews using the lunar surface drill (whose primary mission was to emplace heat flow probes) and the shallower core tube samples collected using what were called "Hoover tubes." The shorter core tubes were attached to extension handles and pounded into the ground using geology hammers.
-the other Doug

Yeah, I watched all these on TV as they were happening, and I remember them pounding those in the ground and turning it and pulling it out. I remember the motorized core driller too, but I had no idea it drilled so deeply. Was there some kind of telescoping extension underground? I never saw anyone carrying around 2.5 meter tubes.

The Luna-24 drilling system was developed by Barman's bureau within the Ministry of General Machine Building. Barman was a first-rate engineer, who also designed the "site 1" launch pad in Baikonur. The soil drill for the Venera landers (also by Barman) was also a nice piece of work. Its electric motor and parts were designed to operate only after thermal expansion at 500 degrees C.

[dvandorn]

The Apollo deep cores were retrieved using segmented tubes. There was an initial "long tube" that was just under a meter long, and IIRC three extensions of about 30 to 40 cm each that were screwed onto the previous tube segment.

Because the suits were so stiff it was difficult to drill the tube completely into the ground, with the drill head going down to surface level, a total of about 2.5 meters of tube were provided, but the deepest core was just more than 2 meters deep.

There was one point at which you *did* see the crews carrying around a 2.5-meter tube, though -- when they extracted the cores from the ground. The whole tube, all four pieces, was pulled out of the ground and then unscrewed into its constituent segments. This provided some serious difficulty on Apollo 15, as well, and they ended up returning the long tube and the three extensions as two separate units, as opposed to breaking them all down into their individual segments. (And yes, these cores were returned in bags, exposed to the crew air environment, as opposed to being placed inside sealed vacuum containers. They wouldn't fit inside the SRCs.)

The heat flow probes were emplaced in a similar fashion, by attaching a succession of hollow tubes to the drill. However, the heat flow probes were simply placed directly into the hollow drill stems (which, for the heat flow holes, were *not* open at the pointy end). Thus there was never a question of the physical surroundings of the heat flow probe, and there was never the possibility of a drilled hole collapsing before the probe was inserted.

Interestingly, the way the drill was designed, you had to drill your heat flow holes first and *then* drill the deep core sample. The heat flow drill stems attached to the drill slightly differently than the sample tubes, to allow for the pushback of material filling the sample tubes. Once you attached a sample tube to the drill, you couldn't use it to drill heat flow stems into the ground. This was a specific concern on Apollo 16, where the HFE electronics box was torn from its cable after the first heat flow hole was drilled, but before the second hole had been drilled. Charlie Duke went on to drill the core sample, and was reminded that he couldn't drill another heat flow hole after he did this. He responded that, if they could by some miracle fix the HFE electronics cable, he was simply planning on trying to drop the second probe into the deep core sample hole.

On all of the missions that included the HFE (four in all, although it was only deployed successfully on two), the alternate plan in case the drill failed was to dig a long trench and bury the probes lengthwise... which never made a lot of sense to me.

-the other Doug

[ljk4-1]

I know this topic asked for actual spacecraft photos, but I thought
folks might like to know about all the great images at Sven Knudsen's
Web site:

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/models.html#fotos

In particular:

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/probes/probes.html

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/sovietsp/sovietsp.html

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Here are some Soviet Mars probes:

[attachment=6036:attachment]

Mars-1, launched in 1962. Enroute to Mars, a faulty valve caused its attitude-control gas to leak out. Before it was gone, mission scientists placed it in spin stabilization, and contact was maintained to a considerable distance. On the top is the mid-course correction engine. Parabolic antenna for transmission of images from Mars, micrometeorites were sensed by the back of the solar panels. The hemispherical domes on ether side are radiators for the temperature control system. Liquid was circulated through the dark and light areas, and heat exchanged with gas inside the centralpressurized compartments. During the cruise, communication was via the helical semidirectional antennas on the radiator domes. Just to the lower right of the parabolic antenna is the methane-band spectrometer designed by Lebedinsky. The 32-kilogram 70mm phototelevision camera looked out through windows on the bottom.

[attachment=6037:attachment]

M-69, created from a zoom-out shot in a film. The spacecraft was an intermediate design leading up to the Mars-3 and Venera-9 designs. Note temperature control radiator bottom center, central fuel tanks for midcourse correction and orbital insertion. White tank in lower write (and one on lower left you can't see well) were pressurized instrument compartents for the radio and color camera systems.

[attachment=6038:attachment] [attachment=6039:attachment]

Mars-3 actual craft (left) and a model (right) in Kaluga. The model shows where science instruments were mounted, microwave radiometer, and the windows for the cameras. What is the thing on the boom lower left???

On actual craft, note the thermal radiators between the central body and solar panels. Again, conical helical antennas were used for all routine inflight communication, during spin stabilized mode. Bottom center are the astronavigation sensors, all duplicated for safety. The central stack of cans are solar direction sensors. On either side are telescopes for sighting Canopus. Above the solar sensors, is the Earth sensors, pointing in the same direction as the parabolic antenna. Above the right-most canopus sensor is a Mars horizon sensor.

The helical semi-directional antennas produce and receive circularly polarized radio waves. They are shaped to produce a funnel-shaped radiation pattern of a particular angle. While spin stabilized and facing the solar panels toward the Sun, the Earth is always witin the antenna's "funnel". Multiple antennas are seen, with different funnel angles for time intervals of the flight.

I have never seen a photograph of Mars-5, just drawings. Anyone ever see one???

[attachment=6040:attachment] [attachment=6041:attachment] [attachment=6043:attachment]

The Mars-3 lander, with heavy outer foam impact shell. The model in the Lavochkin museum is probably mostly made out of real parts. Two optico-mechanical panoramic cameras were the same design as Luna-13's. A small mini rover was to be ejected, on a long cable, to walk away and measure various soil parameters.

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The Fobos spacecraft, before and after the thermal vacuum shielding was installed. The earlier Mars and Venera probes were about 6 tons, but Fobos was 8 tons. An impressive demonstration of the Proton rocket payload capacity.

[ljk4-1]

I have never seen a photograph of Mars-5, just drawings. Anyone ever see one???

This does not look like a drawing to me:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/image/mars_4.jpg

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

This does not look like a drawing to me:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/image/mars_4.jpg

Ah yes, I forgot about that one. Thanks. Here's a better version of Mars-4 and 5. The base of these Mars/Venus probes was a toroidal instrument compartment with fans that circulated cooled nitrogen around and around.

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There was also the orbiter version of M-71, which was meant to arrive at Mars first (even before Mariner-9) and act as a radio becon. But it was stranded in Earth orbit as Kosmos-419:

[attachment=6060:attachment]

If you want a new challenge, find a photo of Mars-6 and -7 that isn't just a mislabeled picture of Mars-3! They're probably very similar, but Mars-6 didn't have most of the cameras and orbital experiments.

A French radio experiment called "Stereo" was on Mars-3, but it failed. Blamont claims that the failure was because Stereo was installed in Kosmos-419! But I'm not sure this is the whole truth, because the photos show it installed also on Mars-3.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

NASA publication ( Monographs in Aerospace History N° 15 - The difficult road to Mars ) has good tech drawings of Mars 3 hardware and its trajectory to the red planet...
I believe it exists as an online-edition ...

[ljk4-1]

NASA publication ( Monographs in Aerospace History N° 15 - The difficult road to Mars ) has good tech drawings of Mars 3 hardware and its trajectory to the red planet...
I believe it exists as an online-edition ...

The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union

http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/mars/...oad_to_mars.pdf

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union

http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/mars/...oad_to_mars.pdf

The picture of the M-71 orbiter comes from that monograph by Perminov. The images in it are quite small. The nicer picture of Mars-5 comes from a Russian book on the mission (Poverkhnosti Marsa).

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Let's see some Venus probes. I think I happen to have a few pictures of those...

[attachment=6088:attachment]

Venera-1, the first space probe to combine all the essential features of a planetary probe: solar power, high-gain radio connection, 3-axis orientation, midcourse correction ability and thermal control. The parabolic antenna has a fine copper mesh that you can just barely see here. In the Mars version (1M), the may have been on the other side of the craft, so it was designed to no block the solar panels. In flight communcation was via semidirectional antennas (the quadrupole antennas seen on the back of the solar panel). The dome on the top is a thermal cover for the course-correction rocket. Below the dome are astronavigation sensors for locating the Earth, Sun and the star Canopus. A spherical entry capsule carrying pennants can be seen just to the right of the parabolic antenna mount.

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Zond-3, an example of the 3MV flyby model, essentially identical to Venera-2. Course correction engine is at the top, camera portholes are on the bottom. Like the 2MV (Mars-1), domes with circulating fluid were used to regulate temperature. Zond-3 had experimental ion engines for attitude control, the first use of electric propulsion in space.

On the upper left, below the engine, you can see the sun-location sensors on a protuding pedistal. After locking on the sun, the craft would rotate about that axis to locate Canopus with a star locator inside a quatz dome. On the right, you see an extending cylinder with another copy of the precision solar locator -- a backup system for pointing the course-correction engine directly at the Sun.

[attachment=6090:attachment] [attachment=6091:attachment]

Venera-3 was a 3MV lander model, carrying a landing probe very similar to Venera-4, but containing some different experiments, such as a rocking sensor to see if it landed on a solid or liquid surface. It also contained a gamma-ray experiment to measure surface rock isotopes. Venera-3 was actually a repurposed Mars probe. Zond-1 was an actual Venus lander model, only different slightly (less dense solar cells for example).

[attachment=6092:attachment] [attachment=6093:attachment] [attachment=6094:attachment]

Venera-4 was the first space probe to perform in situ measurement in the environment of another planet. This probe, built by NPO Lavochkin instead of Korolev's bureau, had many improvements. Thermal radiation was a gas circulation system, using the parabolic antenna as a cold radiator. In the leftmost photo, you can see the actual landing capsule with its phenolic-resin heat shield (not the polished white capsule displayed in museums). In the rightmost image, you see the craft with thermal vacuum shield installed. Note the differently shaped conical helical semidirectional antennas -- another example of the tuned funnel-shaped radiation pattern for efficient Earth communcation while spin stabilized. The parabolic antennas were only used to relay images and telemetry from planetary encounters.

[attachment=6096:attachment] [attachment=6098:attachment]

Here you can see a test of the pyrotechnic charges deploying the landing capsule. And in case you wondered why the Soviets had such extensive air conditioning systems on their probes, here is a technician working on the Venera-4 main bus...packed solid with vacuum tubes.

[attachment=6097:attachment]

Venera-7 and 8 carried a much larger, more substantial landing capsule.

[ljk4-1]

Don, did the Soviet Mars probes launched in late 1960 - and all of
which failed - look like Venera 1 or Mars 1?

Paolo Ulivi has a rough graphic of one on his Web site, but I
wondered if you knew of any actual photos or more detailed
drawings of what would have been humanity's first Mars probes?

http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/1M.html

Apparently there was going to be a third Mars probe sent with
the other two in 1960, but it was never launched. Does anyone
know what happened to it? Was it used for another mission or
did it end up in a museum? Or worse, scrap?

About ten years ago a friend reproduced what he thought Mars
would look like through the cameras of the Mars 1 probe had it
made it to Mars in 1963. I will see if he has it online and is
willing to display it here. As I recall, he presumed it would
look a bit better than the first images from Mariner 4.

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Don, did the Soviet Mars probes launched in late 1960 - and all of
which failed - look like Venera 1 or Mars 1?

1M looked like Venera-1, it was before the second-generation (2MV) probes were designed (such as Mars-1).

Because of the late launch, 1M was reduced to a sort of "Pioneer V" type mission. In other words, just launch it into space to save face. The course correction engine was removed, so 1M as launched would not have had the dome-shaped struction on top. 1M was also supposed to carry the Luna-3 type phototelevision camera, looking out through a window on the side of the cylindrical body. That was also removed.

[attachment=6106:attachment]

Mars-1 carried a 70mm phototelevision camera of considerable size. It's hard to say what images from it would have looked like. If the radio link had functioned well, the pictures should have been Zond-3 quality or better, since it was build by the same team and used a much larger film size than Zond-3. The radio system, was similar to the one used later for Zond-3. It carried 112 frames of film and scanned images of 1440 lines. I would guess Mars-1 images would have been much higher quality than Mariner-4 -- but that's not saying much!