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PhilHorzempa
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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
BruceMoomaw
We had quite a detailed discussion of the Luna 4 through 13 lander missions in -- of all places -- the "I'm back from the Europa Focus Group meeting" thread down in the "Europa" section (which gives you some idea of how this site tends to wander around erratically from one subject to the next; we got there, somehow, via discussions of a possible lightweight lander design for Europa Orbiter). It turns out that there was an issue of "JBIS" a few years ago that provided extremely detailed information on these missions (plus the Luna 10 through 14 orbiters).

An earlier issue of JBIS detailed the very first Soviet Luna missions (1958 through 1960). I don't know whether there are any issues of that magazine (which does periodic issues on astronautics history, including the Soviet branch) that cover the later Lunas (1969-76), but I wouldn't be surprised. Once again, I'll have to take a look the next time I'm down at UC-Davis.
tasp
Luna 23 and Luna 18 were apparently damaged by hard landings. I am just speculating, but perhaps the landing radar was confused by surface boulders and the retros cut out a little early.


Luna 15, I guess they are pretty sure was a sample return, crashed too. Considering the complexity of a sample return, a first attempt (is this known for sure?) might have gone awry in any number of ways. Considering the US Ranger series, (but not the Surveyors!), probably not too surprising.
ljk4-1
QUOTE (tasp @ May 4 2006, 08:52 AM) *
Luna 15, I guess they are pretty sure was a sample return, crashed too. Considering the complexity of a sample return, a first attempt (is this known for sure?) might have gone awry in any number of ways. Considering the US Ranger series, (but not the Surveyors!), probably not too surprising.


I saw a drawing of Luna 15 circa 1992 from the aerospace group that
used to put out annual reports on Soviet spacecraft and missions (could
someone help me with the name, please? Thanks.).

It looked exactly like Luna 16, which did land on the Moon and return
some surface samples successfully to Earth just over one year later.
Not a real surprise, but nice to know.

This Web site has what it labels to be an image of Luna 15, but can
anyone confirm this?

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0196.shtml

At least it wasn't a scenario out of the 1968 film Countdown where
Luna 15 was really a desperate manned attempt to beat the USA and
the Soviets ended up losing three cosmonauts.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062827/

The Soviets were also trying to beat Apollo 11 to the Moon and return
with some surface samples before the US did as a sort of coup. No
doubt rushing too fast in this part of the Space Race cost us all a little
bit of a different place to study from the Moon.

There is a very funny story created by Dwayne Day in 1999 detailing
how Luna 15 was NOT an unoccupied vehicle:

http://www.astronautix.com/astros/bormp504.htm

Don P. Mitchell has an incredible collection of Soviet lunar probe
images, including many from the two Lunakhods:

http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_Catalog.htm

This is not to ignore or downplay anyone else's collection of similar
images, it's just that Mitchell appears to have the most I am aware of.

There are already some other UMSF threads that discuss the Soviet lunar
missions and have images from them as well:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=13362

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...findpost&p=9080

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...findpost&p=9101

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=11828

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=13688
gndonald
The Astronautix.com website has a good timeline of the Luna probe series, for some of the pictures taken on those missions, Don P. Mitchells website, is the best place to look.

Interestingly while Luna 15/18 were lost in crashes, Luna 23 landed with no problems but suffered a drill failure after landing, the Soviets apparently 'ran' the lander for a few days and then shut it down, however no images seem to have been released from the mission. (No pictures were taken by Luna 16 because the floodlights failed to switch on.) It would be interesting to know if any pictures were taken by Luna 23, or whether like Luna 24 the probe did not carry a camera.

Sorry for duplicating ljk-4's links but obviously we were typing at the same time.
tedstryk
QUOTE (tasp @ May 4 2006, 12:52 PM) *
Luna 23 and Luna 18 were apparently damaged by hard landings. I am just speculating, but perhaps the landing radar was confused by surface boulders and the retros cut out a little early.
Luna 15, I guess they are pretty sure was a sample return, crashed too. Considering the complexity of a sample return, a first attempt (is this known for sure?) might have gone awry in any number of ways. Considering the US Ranger series, (but not the Surveyors!), probably not too surprising.


Also, Luna 15 was launched to beat Apollo 11 back to earth with the first samples to try to take some of Apollo's thunder. The propaganda lines would have spoken of how they returned samples at a fraction of the cost. But based on everything I have seen, they really needed more time to work on it (and, once they had that time, Luna 16 suceeded).
gndonald
This is a follow up to my earlier post (see above). The information on Astronautix.com states that the Soviets continued to operate the lander portions of Luna 16/20/24 (The sample return craft) after the samples were launched towards Earth.

Similarly, the abortive Luna 23 mission also featured a period of lander operation, though in this case it would have been tied to the failed attempt to collect surface material.

It would appear that at least Lunar 16 and 20 were fitted with cameras, but it is unclear if Luna 23 was so equipped. Luna 24 (allegedly) had no cameras fitted.

Does anyone have a listing, rough or otherwise of what other instruments were fitted to the landers and on just how long the landers were operated after launch of the samples?
Phil Stooke
Following up on a couple of points here... I'm on vacation and away from my usual resources...

The Russians are trying to collect everything and make it available through a website, similar to a PDS node. But they have no money for it. I have been close to the people involved, chiefly Kira B. Shingareva of MIIGAiK and Sasha Basilevsky of Vernadsky. Some material has been collected - big tapes with Lunokhod images from the State Archives, stuff stolen for later sale and now recovered, negatives scanned etc. But getting it all organized is another matter and the lack of money makes it very slow. Some has been done on a volunteer basis. So don't expect results for a long time. What we REALLY need is a philanthropist to put money into it. So email all your philanthropist buddies.

Lunas 15, 16, 18 and 20 plus the failed sample return launches from that period - all had cameras. Don Mitchell describes them on his site, referenced above. Luna 16, it appears now, DID take images. It landed at night and its lights failed, as noted above, but it took pics anyway. But they were mostly black with just a few spots of light from earthshine. They were never published. (This info from Basilevsky via Mitchell). I would dearly love to get my hands on the digital data, and I assume we could do a lot more with it using modern methods than was possible back in 1970. The later sample return missions had no cameras due to having a redesigned drill. The old camera was for targeting the old drill to a rock-free spot. The new drill couldn't be retargeted and also took up the camera's space and mass (I think).

Phil
ljk4-1
In the early 1990s, Andrew Lepage wrote in the online EJASA on a series
about the Soviet and US race to the Moon, focusing on then new information
about the lunar probes.

All of the EJASA issues from 1989 to 1996 are online here:

ftp://ftp.seds.org/pub/info/newsletters/ejasa/

Andrew's articles are in these issues:

"Mars 1994" - March 1990
"The Great Moon Race: The Soviet Story, Part One" - December 1990
"The Great Moon Race: The Soviet Story, Part Two" - January 1991
"The Mystery of ZOND 2" - April 1991
"The Great Moon Race: New Findings" - May 1991
"The Great Moon Race: In the Beginning..." - May 1992
"The Great Moon Race: The Commitment" - August 1992
"The Great Moon Race: The Long Road to Success" - September 1992
"Recent Soviet Lunar and Planetary Program Revelations" - May 1993
"The Great Moon Race: The Red Moon" - July 1993
"The Great Moon Race: The Tide Turns" - August 1993
"The Great Moon Race: The Final Lap - November 1993
"A Personal Adventure in Home Computing: The Origin of Comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9" - March 1994
"The Great Moon Race: The Finish Line" - July 1994
Dyche Mullins
QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ May 4 2006, 06:53 AM) *
There is a very funny story created by Dwayne Day in 1999 detailing
how Luna 15 was NOT an unoccupied vehicle:

http://www.astronautix.com/astros/bormp504.htm


This reminds me of the beautiful and brutally satirical Victor Pelevin novel, _Omon Ra_, in which none of the Soviet space probes was ever really UNmanned.

http://lib.ru/PELEWIN/omon_engl.txt
ljk4-1
QUOTE (Dyche Mullins @ May 4 2006, 04:42 PM) *
This reminds me of the beautiful and brutally satirical Victor Pelevin novel, _Omon Ra_, in which none of the Soviet space probes was ever really UNmanned.

http://lib.ru/PELEWIN/omon_engl.txt


According to the Phantom Cosmonaut section of Astronautix, apparently there
were rumors of a "KGB Dwarf" who secretly drove Lunakhod 1 on a one-way
suicide mission!

http://www.astronautix.com/astros/kgbdwarf.htm


"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable supplies of air and soil . . . preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and I will say the love, we give our fragile craft." - Adlai Stevenson
BruceMoomaw
If you REALLY like Luna 15 conspiracy theories, Allen Drury -- the Godawful right-wing political-thriller writer who got the Pulitzer for "Advise and Consent" in 1960 only because, after the Pulitzer board had awarded it to Saul Bellow, the newspaper publishers who own the Pulitzer Prize organization decided to take it away from Bellow and award it to Drury for writing an Important Political Novel -- wrote a lulu in 1970 called "The Throne of Saturn", in which Luna 15 was an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the Apollo 11 landing site and kill Armstrong and Aldrin because...because...well, just because.

QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ May 4 2006, 09:09 PM) *
According to the Phantom Cosmonaut section of Astronautix, apparently there
were rumors of a "KGB Dwarf" who secretly drove Lunakhod 1 on a one-way
suicide mission!


Maybe they were circus clowns, and there were several of them onboard.
gndonald
Hopefully the last word on Luna 15 conspiracies. The rpg magazine Dragon once ran a series of articles adapting the moon to different rpgs. One of these was called 'Zondraker' and dealt with espionage on the moon in a hypothetical 1980's.

One of the scenario outlines had the players visiting the Luna 15 site and discovering that rather than a Luna 16/18/23/24 style lander the probe was in fact a last ditch attempt to put a Cosmonaut on the moon.
4th rock from the sun
Click to view attachment

Finally I've finished one of my projects: merging various Luna 3 images to reduce noise, cover all of the moon's disk and replace missing data areas.

This is my final result and not that bad in my opinion ;-)
Much of the image resolution was lost in the noise, but the picture's dynamic range was recovered.
tedstryk
QUOTE (4th rock from the sun @ May 6 2006, 01:48 AM) *
Click to view attachment

Finally I've finished one of my projects: merging various Luna 3 images to reduce noise, cover all of the moon's disk and replace missing data areas.

This is my final result and not that bad in my opinion ;-)
Much of the image resolution was lost in the noise, but the picture's dynamic range was recovered.


Nice work! I had never thought of doing that!
DonPMitchell
Very cool. Where did you find a good picture of frame 35?

I'm still trying to pry more Luna-3 pictures loose. To be honest, they are probably sitting in a drawer, scratched up, covered with dust. But I'm told the magnetic tape still exists, and there is a machine at IKI that can read it. I'm pressing some folks to do that.


I made this figure for my book, just to give people a reference for what they are looking at in the Luna-3 images. The clementine image is a texture-mapped sphere.

Click to view attachment

So I guess this means the American Anti-Communist League was wrong. The Russians didn't fake the pictures.
gndonald
QUOTE (4th rock from the sun @ May 6 2006, 09:48 AM) *
Click to view attachment

Finally I've finished one of my projects: merging various Luna 3 images to reduce noise, cover all of the moon's disk and replace missing data areas.

This is my final result and not that bad in my opinion ;-)
Much of the image resolution was lost in the noise, but the picture's dynamic range was recovered.


You've done a magnificient job with that image, any plans to do the same thing with the Zond 3 far-side photos?
4th rock from the sun
QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 7 2006, 03:45 AM) *
Very cool. Where did you find a good picture of frame 35?


Hum... I didn't !!!! I just used the clean parts from several frames to create the mosaic.

Here's what you get using the odd number frames. Photoshop does help here ;-)

Click to view attachment

QUOTE (gndonald @ May 7 2006, 07:05 AM) *
You've done a magnificient job with that image, any plans to do the same thing with the Zond 3 far-side photos?


I'm at (slow) work with those, but it's complicated because of spacecraft motion. Some kind of image projection will be needed to create a full mosaic.

So far, I've got this :-) from frames 3, 5 and 7:

Click to view attachment
Phil Stooke
Here is a mosaic of Zond 3 images which I made a while ago. The early images over Oceanus Procelarum can't be fitted to the later ones. I apologise for the image size and quality, but I'm away from home and don't have my usual stuff with me.

Phil

Click to view attachment
tedstryk
Very impressive.

This Zond image is another favorite of mine from the Soviet archive.

DonPMitchell
QUOTE (4th rock from the sun @ May 7 2006, 04:05 AM) *
Hum... I didn't !!!! I just used the clean parts from several frames to create the mosaic.


Oh wait, my mistake. I was thinking you used frame 32 for some reason.

I would love to get the signal off the Luna-3 tapes. They reprocessed some of them in 1965, and those images display considerably better quality.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
DonPMitchell
QUOTE (tedstryk @ May 7 2006, 03:37 PM) *
Very impressive.

This Zond image is another favorite of mine from the Soviet archive.


I was stunned when I saw the Zond-8 images. They are comparable to the Apollo photos in quality. They've scanned the original film at very high resolution. I've got all of them on my catalog site, but at 1/4 resolution to give media3.net a break.
tedstryk
QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 9 2006, 10:12 AM) *
I was stunned when I saw the Zond-8 images. They are comparable to the Apollo photos in quality. They've scanned the original film at very high resolution. I've got all of them on my catalog site, but at 1/4 resolution to give media3.net a break.


They are impressive. I have an archived that I may get around to scanning one of these years. I wonder if there are similar versions of the Zond 6 and 7 images, despite the fact that the Zond 6 shots have suffered greatly.
4th rock from the sun
QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 9 2006, 11:02 AM) *
Oh wait, my mistake. I was thinking you used frame 32 for some reason.

I would love to get the signal off the Luna-3 tapes. They reprocessed some of them in 1965, and those images display considerably better quality.


Yes, that would be great. There is software that decodes fax images using a PC's soundboard. I've tired it on HF Fax transmissions, using a SW radio connected to the PC and it works.

So it would be as "simple" as converting the Luna 3 tapes to MP3 format. My guess is that the image information uses "regular sound" frequencies, so a simple convertion to MP3 would do.
RJG
QUOTE (4th rock from the sun @ May 9 2006, 01:55 PM) *
So it would be as "simple" as converting the Luna 3 tapes to MP3 format. My guess is that the image information uses "regular sound" frequencies, so a simple convertion to MP3 would do.


Be careful!

MP3 is a lossy compression technique using various methods to determine what to loose -including psychoacoustics. Obviously, if the audio signal is to be demodulated as a visual image, these losses may well manifest themselves as visible artifacts.

You would be better to convert to WAV which doesn't involve compression. Still easy to do but without leading to imperfections in the final image.

Rob
4th rock from the sun
QUOTE (RJG @ May 9 2006, 08:54 PM) *
MP3 is a lossy compression technique using various methods to determine what to loose -including psychoacoustics.


Yes, that is true, but I was just thinking of a quick way to share such data (given that it even exists) and to try to decode it. Anyway, given the limited amount of information in such a transmission, I don't think that MP3 would degrade it much.

Anyway, some links with some info on HF-Fax that might be interesting at least to understand the basics of analog image transmission, as used on the Luna images.

http://www.hffax.de/html/live_charts.html
http://www.hffax.de/html/hf-fax.html
DonPMitchell
QUOTE (4th rock from the sun @ May 9 2006, 03:34 PM) *
Yes, that is true, but I was just thinking of a quick way to share such data (given that it even exists) and to try to decode it. Anyway, given the limited amount of information in such a transmission, I don't think that MP3 would degrade it much.

Anyway, some links with some info on HF-Fax that might be interesting at least to understand the basics of analog image transmission, as used on the Luna images.

http://www.hffax.de/html/live_charts.html
http://www.hffax.de/html/hf-fax.html


Luna-3 images were FM video on a 25 kHz subcarrier. I think you'd want to get uncompressed WAV format, and then party on that with some good digital filters, like a high quality FM demodulator to start with.
ljk4-1
QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 9 2006, 08:32 PM) *
Luna-3 images were FM video on a 25 kHz subcarrier. I think you'd want to get uncompressed WAV format, and then party on that with some good digital filters, like a high quality FM demodulator to start with.


Sven Grahn has these pages on his Web site regarding Luna 3 and its frequencies:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/radioind/Luna3b...Luna3beeps.html

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Yefimov.html

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/radioind/lunaradi/lunaradi.htm
DonPMitchell
QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ May 10 2006, 04:32 AM) *


Sven does nice work. His research into the Jodrell Bank letters has been especially valuable. His estimate of the uplink frequency is in the ballpark -- the actual value was 102 MHz (5/9 times 183.6). That picture I sent him is an antenna from the Saturn system, which I've been told by someone in Russia was used for Luna-3. I'm a little skeptical now about that.
4th rock from the sun
QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ May 10 2006, 12:32 PM) *
Sven Grahn has these pages on his Web site regarding Luna 3 and its frequencies:
...


Thanks for the links. I've read them all in detail and there are some interesting informations there:

There were 2 transmission modes, a Slow Mode and a Fast Mode. Total transmission times for a scan line and a complete picture are given, but they are inconsistent!

On the Slow Mode the rate was 1.25s per line with a total transmission time of around 30m. Well, 1000 lines would only take 1250s(~21m) to be transmited, so I think that is the accurate figure.

On the Fast Mode the transmission time is given as 15s for a whole frame, duration of a frame 10s !?!
These numbers don't make much sense. Perhaps a total transmission time of 1.5 minutes at ~0.1 seconds per line are the correct values?
4th rock from the sun
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ May 7 2006, 09:19 PM) *
Here is a mosaic of Zond 3 images which I made a while ago. The early images over Oceanus Procelarum can't be fitted to the later ones. I apologise for the image size and quality, but I'm away from home and don't have my usual stuff with me.

Phil


Hi again wink.gif Here are my Zond 3 mosaics reduced in 50% size. Because of significant spacecraft movement it's only possible to join 3 or 4 images. 5 mosaics can be created this way using all the avaliable images.

Click to view attachment

If someone wants to go to trouble of reprojecting the images and assembling a complete mosaic I can provide the higher resolution originals. This wil be another of my ongoing projects...
Decepticon
Thanks so much for posting that!

I've been wanting to see these images for a long time.
edstrick
I've wanted to play with the Luna 3 images for years, but time, software availability (and time to learn to use it) and....

The original atlas of Luna 3 images had density sliced frames for some of the available images that could be histogram-matched and then merged into one dataset with extended dynamic range and less noise. The bigger part of the restoration would / should exist of removing or reducing periodic noise from the images with Fourier filtering: generate an image of just the periodic noise and subtract it from the raw image. Then further cleanup to remove noise-spike induced salt-and-pepper noise and readout and other artifacts.

Have at it!


The Zone 3 images could be mapped onto a sphere in something like 3 image sets and then registered and mosaiced.

I'd also *LOVE* to see a Zond 3 "movie".... Project each image on to the lunar sphere as viewed by Zond at the time of each image, then keeping the center of the sphere in the center of the frame and letting the sphere diameter vary as it did during the approach and flyby, make an animated gif / mov of the entire flyby with the frames displayed at proportional time intervals
4th rock from the sun
Click to view attachment

Just to see how much of the Moon was covered by the Zond images I made some crude reprojections to fill in the missing areas and came up with this. The image is as full resolution and a better result could be done with accurate reprojection and image averaging.
DonPMitchell
Great Zond-3 mosaics!

To answer you question about Luna-3 transmision modes, the impression I have is that the early transmissions were very noisy, and they got higher quality pictures when the probe came back close to Earth. The images published in Lipsky's atlas are all slow-scan mode. The bands of static are periodic and consistant with the spin rate of Luna-3 (180 sec/rotation) after it finished photography and returned to spin-stabilized orientation. There was a dead spot in the radiation pattern of its antenna.

As far as I know, the only source of Luna-3 and Zond-3 images are prints of Lipsky's exposure-zone photos. I'm still trying to track down a real copy of the photos, and not a printed version. I just heard a few days ago that the Luna-3 magnetic tape is not located in the state archive institute, so we don't know where it is yet. My best guess now is that RNII KP has it.

I've gone off using the FFT method of descreening. What I do now is orient and resize the image so it is a 45 degree screen with exactly 5 pixels per vertical repeat. Then I filter it with a 5x5 custom box filter -- just go into the custom filter section of Photoshop and put a "1" in each box and set the weighting to 25. That box filter gives you a sinc function in the frequency domain, and it kills all the ink-dot harmonics completely. So much so, you can now sharpen the image as much as the noise level allows.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

For the rotation of the image, to make the screen 45 degrees, photoshop is fine. For the rescaling, I prefer to use the Lanczos-windowed sinc filter in ACDSee. There is a mistake in their filter that introduces a phase shift, but doesn't seem to bother too much (ACDSee is so buggy!). When I really care, I have a Kaiser-windowed sinc resampling routine I wrote in C++ that is rock solid.
Phil Stooke
4th Rock, I am very impressed with your Zond 3 mosaics.

Phil
4th rock from the sun
Thanks all for the info and kind words!

I just found this on the internet: http://selena.sai.msu.ru

At least for me it's a new page!
DonPMitchell
QUOTE (4th rock from the sun @ May 15 2006, 09:02 AM) *
Thanks all for the info and kind words!

I just found this on the internet: http://selena.sai.msu.ru

At least for me it's a new page!


Yeah, I got a few of my catalog images there, it's where Lipsky worked. I've had indirect dealings with them. Look at the Russian site, not the English versions. There's a nice set of reports on Luna probes here:Planetary Science and here:Luna Probes
Bob Shaw
Don:

Perhaps, in your researches into the Soviet moon probes, you've come across some details which might relate to a subject we previously discussed on here. Bruce Moomaw has managed to persuade us that the hard-landing Luna vehicles used some form of airbags during the landing sequence - an element of that process which was new to most of us! Although it's fairly obvious where the bags must have been (in a splittable 'sock' over the ball of the lander) there are still very few references to just *how* the darn things worked (or didn't).

Have you come across these air-bags, or a landing sequence which refers to them?

Bob Shaw
tedstryk
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 15 2006, 06:43 PM) *
Bruce Moomaw has managed to persuade us that the hard-landing Luna vehicles used some form of airbags during the landing sequence - an element of that process which was new to most of us! A
Have you come across these air-bags, or a landing sequence which refers to them?

Bob Shaw


This is correct:
"Luna 9 had a mass on release from the upper stage of 1602 kg. The KTDU main engine had a thrust of 4500 kgf and 847 kg of propellant was loaded. A total of 6 seconds of burn time was allocated for mid-course manoeuvres and 45 seconds for the lunar landing braking manoeuvre. After the braking manoeuvre, with the probe some distance over the lunar surface, the burn-out mass of the entire spacecraft was 430 kg. After the impact air bag had cushioned the final bouncing impact on the surface, the final mass of the probe on the surface was 79.5 kg The television camera aboard had a resolution of 15-20 mm on objects 2 m from the camera. Batteries provided power for five days of operation on the surface, with one hour of data transmissions back to earth per day."
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lunae6.htm
Bob Shaw
Interestingly, the Astronautix.com page has a picture of... ...landing bag tests!

So: what exactly happened to the landing bags after, er, landing?

Bob Shaw
BruceMoomaw
One of the cartoons we saw earlier (or at least I saw one, and I think it was on this site) showed the two of them simply being separated from the capsule after landing.

That series of photos of them actually being tested is a neat finding -- I hadn't heard anything about it.
DonPMitchell
Yes indeed, the Soviets used airbags to land on the Moon. The main craft used an optical horizon and a radar altimeter to control its descent, with a retro rocket. The airbags were inflated, and when a long probe touched the Moon, the airbag was jetisoned. After it came to rest, pyrocharges blew the airbags away from the "automatic lunar station". If you look at the Luna-13 panoramas, you can see pieces of the spacecraft strewn about the landing site:

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

When Luna-9 was built by NPO Lavochkin, they used the basic plan of the Luna-5 to 8, but with a couple minor changes. The airbag was inflated later, after the radar and other instruments were jetisoned. Here is a picture of the pre-Luna-9 craft, identifiable because the gas bottle is on the right-side modules, which is ejected a while before landing, to save weight. Most of what you're see when you look at Luna-9 is the engine and its fuel tanks, with some equipment attached to the outside. The oxydizer tank is spherical, and the fuel tank below it is toroidal, typical Russian design esthetics.

Click to view attachment

The cone-shaped protrusion on the front of the airbag is also indicitive of Luna-8, some funky extending device on the lander that was absent from Luna-9.

Another difference is that the lander was pressurized in the earlier versions. The cycloramic camera looked out through a periscope inside a cylindrical glass window, somewhat like the Venera-9 camera. On Luna-9, the lander was open to vacuum, and a new higher-resolution camera was designed to operate in a vacuum. In fact, lots of pictures of "Luna-9" are actually pictures of the earlier vehicle. For example, the lander on display at the Engeriya Museum is Luna-8, naturally because they built those. At the Lavochkin Museum you will find the honest-to-god Luna-9. Here is a set of photos of Luna-8 (top row) versus Luna-9 (bottom row):

Click to view attachment

The Mars-3 lander was somewhat different. They used a parachute and retro rocket, and the lander was encased in a foam shock absorber that was blasted off after it landed:

Click to view attachment
BruceMoomaw
Yeah, we discussed a lot of this over at (of all places) the "I'm back from the Europa Focus Group meeting" slot. Luna 8's airbags were inflated just before the retrorocket started -- but one of them was punctured by a faultily installed bracket, and the resultant gas jet threw the craft into a tumble which its attitude-control jets were unable to overcome. So, as one of the Luna 9 changes, they arranged for its airbags to inflate after the retrorocket had started, on the grounds that its pointable nozzles could emit enough thrust to overcome any attitude disturbances caused by small leaks in the airbags.

The very detailed report on the 1963-68 Soviet lunar missions in the Sept. 2000 JBIS reveals that 1965 marked a "stairstep" progress by the Soviets toward a successful landing -- starting with Luna 5, every mission got a little farther than the last one, only to be stopped by a new malfunction whose existence had been concealed by the earlier occurrence of the previous one.
edstrick
I suspect that for the Luna-3 data, fourier or wavelet (I've never played with those) processing to remove the fine diagonal noise pattern will probably work better than Don Mitchell's descreening, as it's a periodic ripple pattern, may be multi-spatial-frequency, and there may be larger, lower spatial frequencies in the noise.
Sometimes you have to peel layers of noise from an image like layers of an onion, as one noise removal or reduction may interfere with another. I'd remove the fine periodic noise first, then de-spike the data judiciously, then apply a special single-line filter to each original line of data, measuring it's local standard deviation (say along 1/20'th line) and not smoothing the low noise lines, while progressively median-filtering (tends to preserve edges between different uniform areas) noisier lines more and more as the noise level gets worse. Then you could tackle horozontal and vertical brightness striping.
Bob Shaw
Don:

Excellent information, thanks! I think I begin to understand, now, thanks to the input you and Bruce gave!

Bob Shaw
DonPMitchell
QUOTE (edstrick @ May 16 2006, 02:49 AM) *
I suspect that for the Luna-3 data, fourier or wavelet (I've never played with those) processing to remove the fine diagonal noise pattern will probably work better than Don Mitchell's descreening, as it's a periodic ripple pattern, may be multi-spatial-frequency, and there may be larger, lower spatial frequencies in the noise.
Sometimes you have to peel layers of noise from an image like layers of an onion, as one noise removal or reduction may interfere with another. I'd remove the fine periodic noise first, then de-spike the data judiciously, then apply a special single-line filter to each original line of data, measuring it's local standard deviation (say along 1/20'th line) and not smoothing the low noise lines, while progressively median-filtering (tends to preserve edges between different uniform areas) noisier lines more and more as the noise level gets worse. Then you could tackle horozontal and vertical brightness striping.


The technical issue is filter kernel support. Fourier transform filtering is bad because it is too global. Removing the stipple pattern from one place will create a stipple pattern in a smooth area. The box filter is not a very good filter, but it has very local properties. The Right Thing To Do ™ is to use a windowed comb filter of some sort. Photoshop's filtering system is not good enough to define such a thing, so I'll have to do it in C++ one of these days.
DonPMitchell
QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 16 2006, 05:22 AM) *
Excellent information, thanks!


The Soviet program is fascinating, but not easy to study. But it is a fun detective story,the perfect passtime for a retired scientist. Here's my Kosmos 101 guide:

1. Read Russian. That's a must, or you will just be reading a rehash of a couple original sources, copied over and over again -- someone who read an article by someone who read Chertok's books!

2. Pretty much everything you see comes from a few Russian sources, so start with those: Boris Chertok's books, the Korolev biographies by Keldysh and Raushenbakh, Pravda for the very early stuff (1957-1965 or so) but after that the scientific literature (Cosmic Research, Artificial Earth Satellites), Glushko's Encyclopedia, the big RKK Energiya books. NASA has translated versions of some of this. Cosmic Research is in English, but is not aimed at the layman. Novosti Kosmonavtiki has printed a lot of interesting historical articles, and they've also been able to answer a few obscure questions, as have people on their Russian-language space forum.

3. Soviet technical books on rocketry and spacecrafts can be very valuable. They had their own way of doing things and their own jargon. They love acronyms, so get use to reading about RNs and KAs and SAs and IPs. They have as many words for rocket as an Innuit has for snow! Raushenbakhs technical books are good, Gleb Maximov's thesis on spacecraft design, Popov's book on reentry vehicles, the various mission-specific books (Luna atlas, Venus atlas, Surface of Venus, Surface of Mars, Vega, Phobos, etc), some of which are available in English but most not.

After that, things get interesting. I've been lucky to earn the trust of most of the remaining Russian scientists. At this point they know I'm not researching yet another tell-all about how crappy the Soviet space program was, and they know I've studied their publications and work. If you want to know what was in the 2MV Venus landing capsule, there is only one source of information, the men who built it. Nothing is in print. I've also gotten to know exactly what is where in the museums and institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and that's allowed me to hire TASS and private photographers to explore and photograph things.

One fellow managed to get into NPO Pilyugin and photographed a lot of stuff. On the signs and posters were tables of obscure stuff, jargon and acronyms for how guidance systems worked at different times, along with the devices on shelves. It was perfect timing, because I had just read an old rocketry book that had all this stuff in it, so it was like "Ah, that's an eletrochemicial integrator, that's an RC-chain integrator, there is the R-7 gyro horizon!". Fun stuff.
DonPMitchell
Here's a piece from Boris Chertok, describing a failed Luna probe launch in 1960. Pardon my translation skills...

QUOTE
This time, using twilight, I decided on the fifteen-minute readiness to go away from the control bunker, into the steppe towards the launching site. Without hurrying, delighted by the aroma of steppe, I stopped at 300 meters and admired by the vividly illuminated by searchlights rocket. From control bunker is audible intensified by dynamic loudspeakers report, "one minute readiness". I'm stunned by the roar of all engines!

I see or surmise that the lateral stage E nearest to me does not depart together with entire rocket, but, vomiting flame, it falls downward. Remaining stages reluctantly go upward and it seems directly must toward me, they are scattered. I badly consider, which way to fly, but I feel, that one of the blocks with the roaring engine in next seconds will cover me. To run! Only to run!

Now in the steppe, vividly iluminated by the torch of the rocket stage E flying to me, I probably placed my pesonal record. But steppe - not racetrack. I stumble and fall, having been painfully struck by elbow. It is behind heard explosion, and it pours over me hot air. The lumps of the earth raised by explosion next fall. I hobble to the side of control bunker, it is further from the enormous hot bonfire which blazes next to that place, from where I ran!

Center stage fell and exploded at MIK headwharters itself - glass in the windows and door were knocked out, plastering inside crumbled. One officer, whom by blast wave it struck against the wall, obtained injuries.


And by the way, you can go to Baikonur to witness a launch. Unlike Cape Canaveral, the Russians are perfectly happy to let you stand 300 meters from a Soyuz when it takes off. :-)
djellison
QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 16 2006, 04:33 PM) *
the Russians are perfectly happy to let you stand 300 meters from a Soyuz when it takes off. :-)


That must be spectacular!

Doug
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