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Luna 1, 2 & 3 - 50 years hence
dvandorn
post Dec 11 2008, 06:37 AM
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QUOTE (ZenDraken @ Dec 11 2008, 12:19 AM) *
So the location of the Apollo 12 S-IVB is known, any chance of finding the four panels connecting the S-IVB to the CM? They would be a challenge to find. Would it even be possible?

The SLA panels were jettisoned on every lunar flight, and what's more, the entire stack was on a trajectory to miss the Moon when they were dropped. They were spring-loaded and separated at a good meter per second, so they weren't anywhere near the spacecraft when it reached the Moon... but they likely didn't impact the Moon, either. Or at least, certainly most of them missed the Moon.

Nine sets of four SLA panels, 36 in total, were let loose early on in a translunar trajectory. Some few hit the Moon, I'm sure, and some others likely ended up being swept back in by the Earth. But I'd bet several of them are still out there. And harder to find than a needle in a haystack...

-the other Doug


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Guest_PhilCo126_*
post Dec 11 2008, 09:50 AM
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NASA had a long "learning" path with the Ranger missions; sterilization, cameras, etc...

Luckily Dick Tracy came up with the cause of the failure: smile.gif


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Phil Stooke
post Dec 11 2008, 02:07 PM
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Dvandorn mentions other impacts having dark ejecta, possibly because of released volatiles. But did Luna 2 carry any volatiles? (other than being a pressurized sphere... OK, I guess it did, but it didn't have a fuel tank like a SIVB) Anyway, the point is, yes, we could look for the impact point. The best hope for Luna 2 would be Apollo 15 panoramic frames. When Mark Robinson has finished scanning them I'll take a look. The main problem will be the large uncertainty in location and the small size of this particular object. I don't think the metric frames will be good enough, but I'll try that too.

Phil


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Paolo
post Dec 30 2008, 10:09 AM
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Very good site for the 50th anniversary of Luna fights
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Guest_Zvezdichko_*
post Dec 30 2008, 10:18 AM
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Yeah, this is the best website.

By the way - does somebody know how I can get in touch with Don P. Mitchell? I haven't seen any contact information.
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Guest_Zvezdichko_*
post Jan 2 2009, 10:46 AM
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Happy anniversary!

50 years ago this day the first lunar spacecraft successfully launched!
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Paolo
post Jan 6 2009, 10:41 AM
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Speaking of Luna 1, some images from contemporary magazines:

The Luna 1 "container", where most of the instruments were located and its inside



The 6 January press conference of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. At center Evald Mustel, chief of the Solar research commission, at right Anatoli Dorodnitsin, director of the academy's computation center. The person at left is not identified.

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Geert
post Jan 18 2009, 09:49 AM
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QUOTE (As old as Voyager @ Dec 10 2008, 02:23 AM) *
Speaking of recovery...I've always thought that one of the coolest spacecraft to recover would be the Apollo 10 Lunar Module Snoopy which is currently in solar orbit. Its the only flown Lunar Module to still be in existance.


Fully agree with you, if ever there was an old spacecraft worthy of finding again then it is the Snoopy AS.

Has anyone ever seen (more or less) accurate data on the solar orbit it ended up in? Normally the only information I can find is that it went into solar orbit, but no further data, don't know how long it was tracked after the last burn and how accurate the data would be... Might be a nice puzzle to try to find out how much its orbit was perturbed over the years and where it might be now, it might even have made it back to an unstable earth orbit (similar to the Apollo 12 SIV-b stage), or it might have ended up being captured by Mars or Venus (very very highly unlikely, but it sure would be something if Snoopy made it to Mars..).
Surely there will never be budget for it, but it would be nice if some planetary craft enroute could snap some images of Snoopy in its lonely orbit, let alone if we could recover it...
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dvandorn
post Jan 18 2009, 04:54 PM
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Hmmm... old Snoop was put into a heliocentric orbit that would have been very similar to Earth's orbit around the Sun. Its deviation from Earth's orbit was less than that of the A12 S-IVB, and we know that the S-IVB has slipped into and out of a wide Earth orbit, spending some of its time over the last 39 years in a heliocentric orbit and some of its time in a geocentric orbit.

I'd think it would be so unlikely as to be nearly impossible for LM-4 or the A12 S-IVB to have encountered Earth or the Moon in such a geometry as to pump the orbit significantly, either higher or lower relative to the Sun. So I'd speculate that the haystack you need to search for either would be very near to Earth's orbit; anything much outside of 1AU is so unlikely as to be dismissed, for search purposes, I would think...

I can tell you that Snoopy was tracked for no more than eight hours after its final APS burn, as its batteries and cooling water were only loaded for a short-term flight. It was an 18-hour spacecraft, as LM-3 was, loaded for a very short time of independent flight, so its lifetime after jettison was short.

-the other Doug


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lyford
post Jan 18 2009, 06:47 PM
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QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 18 2009, 08:54 AM) *
Hmmm... old Snoop was put into a heliocentric orbit...

I think this phrase would bring different images to mind depending upon how old one is.... blink.gif laugh.gif

More on topic, something I love about this type of history is that given the same physics and engineering constraints, the Soviets and American spacecraft look so different, such as Ranger vs. Luna 3:

The Soviet craft seem more like solid, enclosed capsules, almost like bathyspheres, while American craft seem more modular, with exposed frameworks and expanding solar panels.

Luna 3


Ranger 1



I wonder if this is more a function of technology timeline, design philosophy or mission profile?


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nprev
post Jan 18 2009, 07:00 PM
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Lyford, I've always been fascinated by the design differences between the old Soviet & US spacecraft myself. It really is striking!

The basic paradigm for the Soviet vehicles seemed to be 'ruggedization': they were built to take punishment.


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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Guest_Zvezdichko_*
post Jan 18 2009, 08:28 PM
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QUOTE
The basic paradigm for the Soviet vehicles seemed to be 'ruggedization': they were built to take punishment.


The same applies to MERs - airbags, etc...
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Big_Gazza
post Jan 19 2009, 09:05 AM
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AFAIK a lot of the visual differences between Soviet and US/Western designs was due to differing requirements for temperature control of electronic systems. The US (with its advanced electronics industry) developed reliable electronics capable of operating in vacuum (and shedding heat radiatively) allowing their assemblies to be supported on open frameworks, with little required to regulate temperature other than louveres. The Soviets with their much less capable industry relied on off-the-shelf industrial-grade air-cooled electronics. They had to be housed in bulky air-tight pressure vessels, and required fans, TCVs, radiators and plumbing.
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Geert
post Jan 20 2009, 02:30 AM
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QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 18 2009, 11:54 PM) *
I'd think it would be so unlikely as to be nearly impossible for LM-4 or the A12 S-IVB to have encountered Earth or the Moon in such a geometry as to pump the orbit significantly, either higher or lower relative to the Sun. So I'd speculate that the haystack you need to search for either would be very near to Earth's orbit; anything much outside of 1AU is so unlikely as to be dismissed, for search purposes, I would think...


Fully agree with you. Chances are that the Snoopy AS also spend at least part of its time in some unstable earth orbit, similar to the A12 S-IVB, unfortunately this makes calculating its present position and orbit very very complicated. As far as I know the A12 S-IVB was discovered first through the near-earth asteroid search, and only later identified as the A12 stage. If Snoopy is ever found again, it will probably be via the same asteroid search, but it's a much smaller object then the SIVB stage and there must be many spend rocket stages and other craft in similar orbits, so identification which is which will be a terrible job. Still it would be nice if it is ever done, and if sometime in the far future we would see a picture of that craft again...
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Phil Stooke
post Jan 20 2009, 04:07 AM
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"The Soviets with their much less capable industry... "

Nobody who could build something as amazing as Luna 3 in 1959 - 1959 for heaven's sake! - could be said to have a 'much less capable industry'. It's certainly true that they were behind in electronics, but their elegant and ingenious engineering solutions found a way to make things happen. They had different capabilities.

Phil


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