Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: tolis Dec 8 2008, 09:24 PM

Hi All,

I am not sure whether this is of interest to the community, but next year will see three
rather significant 50th anniversaries in unmanned lunar and interplanetary spaceflight,
those of Luna-1, the first probe to escape the gravitational field of the Earth (lunar impact intended),
Luna-2, the first probe to actually hit the Moon and Luna 3, the first probe to image the Moon's far side.

Luna-1 was launched on 2nd January 1959 and flew by the Moon on the 4th of the same month at a
distance of 6000 km on its way to heliocentric orbit.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1959-012A

Luna-2 was launched on the 12th of September of the same year, hitting the Moon on the 14th in
the Palus Putredinus region (0 degrees longitude, 29 degrees N latitude) near the crater Archimedes.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1959-014A

Luna-3 was launched less than a month later on 4th October (the second anniversary of Sputnik-1),
swung around the Moon to image the far side on the 7th and transmittted its data to
the Earth by the 18th.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1959-008A

I don't know about you but I'm thinking of raising a glass of champagne a day later
than New Year's Day in honour of Korolev and his merry band of pioneers.

Happy Holidays to All,

Tolis.

Posted by: ZenDraken Dec 9 2008, 04:54 AM

I'd love to see a recovery mission for some of these "ancient" spacecraft. But finding a needle in a haystack might be easy in comparison.

A future assignment for astronautics grad students: Find and recover Luna 1.

Posted by: tedstryk Dec 9 2008, 12:37 PM

Luna 2 smashed into the moon and Luna 3 burned up in Earth's atmosphere, so Luna 1 would be the only candidate for that.

Posted by: As old as Voyager Dec 9 2008, 07:23 PM

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.

Posted by: dvandorn Dec 9 2008, 08:08 PM

Yep -- but only Snoopy's ascent stage survives. The descent stage crashed into the Moon in May or June, 1969. (No one is sure of the exact date, but it was dropped when the LM was in a 70 by 10 mile orbit, it had to have decayed pretty quickly.)

-the other Doug

Posted by: imipak Dec 9 2008, 09:18 PM

For those vehicles that impacted the moon, it'd be interesting to image the impact sites regardless of the vehicle itself being spread in a very thin layer of deposited aluminium, steel and copper vapour as a thin film across thousands of square metres of regolith. Has such a man-made impact site ever been found, on the moon or anywhere else? I can't think of any

Posted by: charborob Dec 9 2008, 09:39 PM

I remember seeing pictures of some of the craters created by the SIV-Bs that smashed into the Moon.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 9 2008, 09:55 PM

The pictures are in the Apollo 16 Preliminary Science report (and in my book). Ranger 7, 8 and 9 impact sites were all imaged - Ranger 8 by Lunar Orbiter 3, the other two by Apollo 16. The Apollo 13 and 14 SIVBs were imaged by Apollo 16. The Apollo 14 LM Ascent Stage was imaged by Apollo 16 at lower resolution.

I have suggested Ranger 6 might be visible in Clementine LWIR images, Ranger 7 may be and Apollo 14 SIVB certainly is.

For more detail and new sites, we have to wait for the new crop of imaging data. The metal wouldn't be vaporized - these impacts are slower than typical asteroidal velocities. It would just be broken up.

Phil

Posted by: kenny Dec 9 2008, 10:26 PM

I'm very familiar with Phil's 3 flights, and I mention each of those 3 Lunas in my talks to various audiences, with a brief discussion about what each did. Luna 2 had really tough metal balls inside with Communist symbols and pennants designed to survive impact, so there will be items there at the impact site, I suspect. I will go with Phil and raise a glass on 2nd Jan, or maybe it should be 3 times, on 2 other days also? They were great achievements in the human endeavour in space.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 10 2008, 02:25 PM

I'll drink to that!

Phil

Posted by: tolis Dec 10 2008, 11:24 PM

It may be an interesting experiment to try and reconstruct the Luna-2 trajectory and refine the impact location based on modern ephemerides and using the radiometric data recorded eg by Jodrell Bank near Manchester, England.
The main impediment that I can think of is retrieving the data from late 1950s storage media (I shudder at the thought!). There may be more.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 11 2008, 12:15 AM

The tracking wasn't very good, but certainly more might be done with it. But a very useful start could be made by examining our crop of brand new spacecraft images of the supposed impact site. The coordinates usually used are only accurate to within about 30 km (one degree). But there are also several reports of visual observations of the impact in Palus Putredinis - see Sky & Telescope, Vol. 20(5), p. 265. That point could be examined - could be today in Apollo 15 panoramic camera frames, actually. But it would be hard to distinguish between Luna 2 and a natural impactor.

All contemporary reports add that the Luna 2 upper stage impacted 30 minutes later. Where is that? I assume that, if it followed the same path through space, it was displaced by the Moon's motion along its orbit in 30 minutes. That puts it somewhere near 20 north, 70 east, but a proper analysis needs to be done.

Phil

Posted by: ilbasso Dec 11 2008, 12:59 AM

Two other pieces of Apollo hardware are still flying around out there, too - the S-IVB stages for Apollo 9 (which was deliberately placed in solar orbit) and Apollo 12 (which was accidental). The Apollo 12 S-IVB was initially recovered in 2002 when it was thought to be a NEO and given designation J002E3.

Posted by: dvandorn Dec 11 2008, 06:15 AM

I just realized I mis-stated something. At the time of ascent/descent stage separation, Snoopy was actually in an orbit of roughly 300 by 10 miles, not 70 by 10. For reasons of aligning the craft properly to simulate a Constant Delta Height rendezvous sequence after two low passes over the landing site, they had to enlarge the orbit between passes to place the LM and CSM in the proper locations.

This impacts this discussion in that a 300 by 10 mile orbit might have taken longer to decay than a 70 by 10 orbit. Depending on how the mascons affected the descent stage, the dynamic may well have raised the periselene a bit before dropping it back down again.

I do know that NASA wasn't at all concerned that this piece of space flotsam might be yet in orbit when they launched Apollo 11 into an almost identical orbit two months later, though. So, the descent stage must have been assumed to have impacted by then. Of course, with no electronic tracking (and skin tracking being nearly impossible at that distance), and with no seismometers emplaced as of yet, it would be nearly impossible to figure out where and when it actually impacted. Same with Apollo 11's ascent stage, the impact of which was never observed on the EASEP seismometer.

The impact speeds were indeed not incredibly high, especially for the orbital assets like the Apollo 10 descent stage and all of the ascent stages from the landing missions. The materials would be broken up a lot but not vaporized. Many small but recognizable pieces of terrestrial technology are scattered around the lunar surface in a variety of locations; some impact sites will likely only be found when someone on the surface runs across one of these pieces.

But truly, is it certain that artificial craters are necessarily indistinguishable from natural ones? The images I've seen from known spacecraft/booster impacts tend to have dark haloes -- at least I recall this from at least two of the S-IVB impact craters and at least one of the Ranger impacts. It was speculated at the time that this might be due to the interaction of remnant volatiles within the impactors with the lunar ejecta, an effect that was most obvious with the S-IVB impacts but still noticeable in some other impacts, including one of the Ranger impacts, if my memory isn't fooling me again...

I know dark haloes are not a definite or ubiquitous trait of spacecraft impact craters, but wouldn't a look through the existing imagery of the "target" areas in question for fresh-looking dark halo craters be something worthwhile to try?

-the other Doug

Posted by: ZenDraken Dec 11 2008, 06:19 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?

Would a future deep-space rendezvous with Pioneer 10/11 or Voyager 1/2 be possible?. I'm sure we have pretty accurate trajectory data for them, but how close would that get you? Once you got there, would you still have to search around with telescopes or radar to find them?

Just asking...

Posted by: dvandorn Dec 11 2008, 06:37 AM

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

Posted by: PhilCo126 Dec 11 2008, 09:50 AM

NASA had a long "learning" path with the Ranger missions; sterilization, cameras, etc...

Luckily Dick Tracy came up with the cause of the failure:

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 11 2008, 02:07 PM

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

Posted by: Paolo Dec 30 2008, 10:09 AM

http://www.mentallandscape.com/L_Luna.htm for the 50th anniversary of Luna fights

Posted by: Zvezdichko Dec 30 2008, 10:18 AM

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.

Posted by: Zvezdichko Jan 2 2009, 10:46 AM

Happy anniversary!

50 years ago this day the first lunar spacecraft successfully launched!

Posted by: Paolo Jan 6 2009, 10:41 AM

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.

Posted by: Geert Jan 18 2009, 09:49 AM

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...

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 18 2009, 04:54 PM

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

Posted by: lyford Jan 18 2009, 06:47 PM

I think this phrase would bring http://www.hiphoprx.com/2008/02/22/snoop-dogg-busted-with-marijuana-in-new-york/ depending upon how old one is....

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.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1959-008A


http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1961-021A



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

Posted by: nprev Jan 18 2009, 07:00 PM

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.

Posted by: Zvezdichko Jan 18 2009, 08:28 PM

The same applies to MERs - airbags, etc...

Posted by: Big_Gazza Jan 19 2009, 09:05 AM

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.

Posted by: Geert Jan 20 2009, 02:30 AM

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...

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 20 2009, 04:07 AM

"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

Posted by: Bernard Jan 20 2009, 08:36 AM

I totally agree whith your opinion, Phil.
Soviet electronic was crude,but they find solutions.

Posted by: ugordan Jan 20 2009, 09:57 AM

Besides, they didn't need to have highly miniaturized and advanced electronics to get the job done. They had larger boosters at disposal to compensate for heavier spacecraft.

Posted by: Geert Jan 20 2009, 10:52 AM

More or less true, but if you read the various accounts, weight savings were still a big issue, especially on lunar and interplanetary craft.

Luna 3 was in many aspects way ahead of its time and a tremendous achievement.


Geert

Posted by: Big_Gazza Jan 20 2009, 11:42 AM

Its gratifying to see so many UMSF'ies defending the Soviet probes! I am more used to listening to the same old derogatory critique and snide comments about "shoddy engineering" Some of the Soviet solutions were quite brilliant. The Venera landers were a great piece of design, and apart from the (recurring) problems with jettisoning camera covers in high temp/pressure conditions, they were remarkably successful.

It is fair to say though that had Soviet electronic components and system integration been more robust, they would have enjoyed much greater success, particularly at Mars. Mars 2 & 3 were badly affected by radio system failures, which may well have cost the Soviets the coup of the first image from the martian surface (there is a school of thought that says the loss of signal was not a problem with the lander, but was due to the orbiter dropping the relay link. Similarly, the failures of the Mars 4-7 armada was due mostly to faulty chips that crippled the control systems. Similarly, the loss of Phobos 2 is chalked up to a computer failure.

I'm REALLY keen to see Phobos-Grunt fly! It would be great to see Russia get a fully successful Mars mission on the scoreboard. The flip side is that a failure would be a gut-punch. I was depressed for 3 weeks after Mars 96 successfully probed the Pacific Ocean, Bolivia and Chile...

Posted by: PhilCo126 Jan 28 2009, 08:57 PM

Well indeed, but then again, these "Soviet-Russian" probes initiated lunar exploration
Moreover, in 1965, Zond 3 completed photo coverage of the lunar far side and for the first time mankind had a complete photographic view of the Moon. To complete the Russian achievements, in 1966 they made the first non-destructive landing on the Moon (Luna 9) and Luna 10 became the first orbiter and all of that 300 years after Flemish astronomer Langrenus started to give names to craters & features on the Moon O

Posted by: Zvezdichko Sep 14 2009, 11:22 AM

Happy anniversary, Lunar enthusiasts!

50 years ago Luna 2 impacted the Moon!

50 years have passed since the first lunar hard landing.

Posted by: Paolo Sep 14 2009, 04:33 PM

Thanks, I was about to forget about that!

Posted by: Paolo Oct 4 2009, 08:59 AM

Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of http://www.mentallandscape.com/L_Luna3.htm, another first for UMSF and for deep space imaging

Posted by: Paolo Oct 4 2009, 09:22 AM

Translated by Babel Fish from a post on the Novosti Kosmonavtiki forum, this is the TASS announcement of the launch of Luna 3. Although the imaging mission is not mentioned, there were enough details released to figure out what the probe was about.


TASS COMMUNICATION
ON THE LAUNCHING IN THE SOVIET UNION THIRD SPACE ROCKET
In accordance with the study program of outer space and preparation for the interplanetary flights on October 4, 1959 in the Soviet Union is successfully realized the third launch of space rocket. The automatic interplanetary station is established on board the rocket. Starting is realized with the aid of the multistage rocket. The terminal stage, after obtaining given speed, put automatic interplanetary station into the required orbit. The orbit of automatic interplanetary station is selected in such a way as to ensure the passage of station near the Moon and flight around the moon. Automatic interplanetary station will pass from the Moon at a distance about 10 thousand kilometers and, after going around the Moon, during its further motion it will pass in the region of the Earth. The selected orbit provides the possibility of observing the station from the northern hemisphere of the Earth. The last step of the third Soviet space rocket has a weight, equal to 1553 kgf (without the fuel). Automatic interplanetary station was established at the terminal stage. After injection into orbit the station was isolated from the rocket. The terminal stage orbits, close to the orbit of station. Automatic interplanetary station is intended for wide scientific research in the outer space. On board the station are established scientific and electronic equipment, and also automatic control system of thermal condition. The electric power supply of onboard scientific and electronic equipment is achieved from the solar batteries and the chemical-battery power supplies. The total weight of station is 278,5 kg. furthermore, at the terminal stage is placed the measuring equipment with the power sources with a weight of 156,5 kg. thus, the total payload weight is 435 kg. The transfer of scientific information and results of measuring the parameters of the motion of automatic interplanetary station will be achieved with the aid of two radio transmitters, working at frequencies 39,986 megahertz and 183,6 megahertz. Simultaneously the control of the elements of orbit of interplanetary space station will be produced on the radio link with a frequency of 183,6 megahertz. The signals of transmitter at the frequency of 39,986 megahertz are the pulses of variable duration from 0.2 to 0,8 s. the pulse repetition frequency 1 plus, minus 0,15 hertz. The transmission of information from onboard of automatic interplanetary station will occur by sessions, daily on 2-4 hours, in accordance with the program of observations. Control of the work of onboard equipment of automatic interplanetary station is produced from the Earth, from the coordinating computation center. The measurement of the parameters of rocket is accomplished by the automated measuring complex, whose ground stations are located in different points of the Soviet Union. Transfers about the motion of the third space rocket will be conducted by all radio stations of the Soviet Union. The current session of work of radio equipment will begin on October 4 13 hours of Moscow time. At this time rocket will be located above the point in the Indian Ocean with the coordinates of 80 degrees of eastern length, 5 degrees of the south latitude of at a distance 108 thousand km above the Earth. The session of work of radio equipment will continue about 2 hours. Radio observations after the rocket can be conducted from the territory of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. The starting of the third Soviet space rocket and the creation of automatic interplanetary station will make it possible to obtain the new data about the outer space and will be further contribution of Soviet people to the international collaboration on the mastery of space.

Posted by: Paolo Oct 19 2009, 05:00 PM

Speaking of the first pictures of the farside of the Moon, released by the Soviet Union 50 years ago these days, I have unearthed a paper from my collection of vintage space magazines predicting what the farside would look like. The paper is "The Other Side of the Moon" by the experienced selenographer H Percy Wilkins (the discoverer of Mare Orientale) published in the January 1953 issue of the JBIS.
I have attached Wilkins' map of the farside. Although he was completely wrong in predicting the presence of large maria, he did a remarkable work of back-tracing young rays on the lunar limb to the farside, where he found that they converged to nine craters. I believe that one of them was Giordano Bruno.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Oct 19 2009, 05:32 PM

Yes, it is a very interesting cartographic curiosity. Versions of it without the fictitious maria were published in the Moore and Wilkins book 'The Moon' (1950) and in New Scientist at the time of Luna 3.

I think it's misleading to say "he did a remarkable work of back-tracing young rays on the lunar limb to the farside, where he found that they converged to nine craters."

Well, OK, it was a remarkable job to attempt it at all. But in truth he did not 'find that they converged on nine craters', he predicted that they might converge on nine craters. In fact, most of those rays are quite dubious to begin with and many of them might not exist. The only obvious candidate for a real ray crater is Giordano Bruno, and Wilkins fully deserves credit for that discovery. As for the others, can any of them be said to exist? Maybe one at 4 north, 100 west, and maybe one at 60 north, 100 East, but the others don't seem to resemble any real craters.

Phil