[X] My Assistant

[tolis]

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.

[Big_Gazza]

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...