the Soviet Union later achieved sample returns of lunar soil via the unmanned Luna 16, Luna 20 and Luna 24 Moon landings; theirLuna 17 and Luna 21 were successful unmanned rover missions. Not included in this accounting is the Soviet Luna 23 mission, which successfully landed but whose scientific equipment then failed, HP 506066-721 Battery
or the American Surveyor 4, with whom all radio contact was lost only moments before a possible perfect automated soft landing.
Manned landings
A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting on 21 July 1969 UTC, HP 506781-001 Battery
with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 (with Cernan being the last to step off the lunar surface). All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained onboard theCommand Module. The last three missions had a rover for increased mobility. HP HSTNN-CB86 Battery
Scientific background
In order to go to the moon, a spacecraft must first leave the gravity well of the Earth. This is achieved by the spacecraft exceeding the escape velocity of the earth. The only practical way of accomplishing this currently is with a rocket.[ HP HSTNN-CB87 Battery
] Unlike other airborne vehicles such as balloons or jets, a rocket is the only known form of propulsion which can continue to increase its speed at high altitudes in the vacuum outside the Earth's atmosphere.
Upon approach of the target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. HP HSTNN-E01C Battery
There are three possible outcomes:a crash landing where no attempt is made to slow down and the spacecraft is totally destroyed upon impact; a hard landing where the impact speed is reduced to less than about 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), survivable by ruggedized machines but not humans; HP HSTNN-XB87 Battery
and a soft landing where the spacecraft decelerates precisely enough to land safely on the surface with negligible speed at contact. The first three attempts by the Americans to perform a successful hard moon landing with a ruggedized seismometer package in 1962 all failed.[5] The Soviets first achieved the milestone of a hard lunar landing with a ruggedized camera in 1966, HP NB800AA Battery
followed only months later by the first unmanned soft lunar landing by the Americans. The escape velocity of the target moon is roughly equivalent to the speed of a crash landing on its surface, and thus is the total velocity which must be shed from the target moon's gravitational attraction for a soft landing to occur. For Earth's Moon, this figure is 2.38 kilometres per second (1.48 mi/s).[6] HP 586006-321 Battery
Such a change in velocity (referred to as adelta-v) is usually provided by a landing rocket, which must be carried into space by the original launch vehicle as part of the overall spacecraft. An exception is the soft moon landing on Titan carried out by the Huygens probe in 2005. As the only moon with an atmosphere, HP 586006-361 Battery
landings on Titan may be accomplished by using atmospheric entry techniques that are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability.
The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959.[7] HP 586006-761 Battery
Crash landings [8] may occur because of malfunctions in a spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an on board landing rocket. There have been many such moon crashes, often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. HP 586007-121 Battery
For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V moon rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the lunar module were deliberately crashed on the Moon several times to provide impacts registering as a moonquake on seismometersthat had been left on the lunar surface. Such crashes were instrumental in mapping the internal structure of the Moon. HP 586007-141 Battery
To return to earth, the escape velocity of the moon must be overcome for the spacecraft to escape the gravity well of the moon. Rockets must be used to leave the Moon and return to space. Upon reaching Earth, atmospheric entry techniques are used to absorb the kinetic energy of a returning spacecraft and reduce its speed for safe landing.[ HP 586007-541 Battery
These functions greatly complicate a moon landing mission and lead to many additional operational considerations. Any moon departure rocket must first be carried to the Moon's surface by a moon landing rocket, increasing the latter's required size. The moon departure rocket, HP 586007-851 Battery
larger moon landing rocket and any Earth atmosphere entry equipment such as heat shields and parachutes must in turn be lifted by the original launch vehicle, greatly increasing its size by a significant and almost prohibitive degree. This necessitates optimizing the sizing of stages in the launch vehicle as well as consideration of using space rendezvous between multiple spacecraft. HP 586028-321 Battery
Political background
The intense and expensive effort devoted in the 1960s to achieving first an unmanned and then ultimately a manned moon landing can only be understoodin the political context of its historical era. World War II with its 60 million dead, half Soviets, was fresh in the memory of all adults. HP 586028-341 Battery
In the 1940s, the war had introduced many new and deadly innovations including blitzkrieg-style surprise attacks used in the invasion of Poland and in the attack on Pearl Harbor; the V-2 rocket, a ballistic missile which killed thousands in attacks on London and Antwerp; and the atom bomb, which killed hundreds of thousands in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. HP 588178-141 Battery
In the 1950s, tensions mounted between the two ideologically opposed superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union that had emerged as victors in the conflict, particularly after the development by both countries of the hydrogen bomb.
On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 as the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and so initiated the Space Age. HP 593550-001 Battery
This unexpected event was a source of pride to the Soviets and shock to the Americans, who could now potentially be surprise attacked by nuclear-tipped Soviet rockets in under 30 minutes. Also, the steady beeping of the radio beacon aboard Sputnik 1 as it passed overhead every 96 minutes was widely viewed on both sidesHP 593553-001 Battery
as effective propaganda to Third World countries demonstrating the technological superiority of the Soviet political system compared to the American one. This perception was reinforced by a string of subsequent rapid-fire Soviet space achievements. In 1959, the R-7 rocket was used to launch the first escape from Earth's gravity into a solar orbit, HP 593554-001 Battery
the first crash impact onto the surface of the Moon and the first photography of the never-before-seen far side of the Moon. These were the Luna 1, Luna 2 and Luna 3 spacecraft.
The American response to these Soviet achievements was to greatly accelerate previously existing military space and missile projects and to create a civilian space agency, NASA. HP 593562-001 Battery
Military efforts were initiated to develop and produce mass quantities of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would bridge the so-called missile gap and enable a policy of deterrenceto nuclear war with the Soviets known as Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD. HP HSTNN-CB0W Battery
These newly developed missiles were made available to civilians of NASA for various projects (which would have the added benefit of demonstrating the payload, guidance accuracy and reliabilities of American ICBMs to the Soviets). While NASA stressed peaceful and scientific uses for these rockets, HP HSTNN-CB0X Battery
their use in various lunar exploration efforts also had secondary goal of realistic, goal-oriented testing of the missiles themselves and development of associated infrastructure,just as the Soviets were doing with their R-7. The tight schedules and lofty goals selected by NASA for lunar exploration HP HSTNN-F01C Battery
also had an undeniable element of generating counter-propaganda to show to other countries that American technological prowess was the equal and even superior to that of the Soviets.
Early Soviet unmanned lunar missions (1958–1966)
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 historical records were released to allow the true accounting of Soviet lunar efforts. HP HSTNN-F02C Battery
Unlike the American tradition of assigning a particular mission name in advance of launch, the Soviets assigned a public "Luna" mission number only if a launch resulted in a spacecraft going beyond Earth orbit. The policy had the effect of hiding Soviet Moon picture failures from public view. If the attempt failed in Earth orbit before departing for the Moon, HP HSTNN-I78C Battery
it was frequently (but not always) given a "Sputnik" or "Cosmos" earth-orbit mission number to hide its purpose. Launch explosions were not acknowledged at all.
Early American unmanned lunar missions (1958–1965)
In contrast to Soviet lunar exploration triumphs in 1959, success eluded initial American efforts to reach the Moon with thePioneer and Ranger programs. HP HSTNN-I79C Battery
Fifteen consecutive U.S. unmanned lunar missions over a six year period from 1958 to 1964 all failed their primary photographic missions;[9][10] however, Rangers 4 and 6 successfully repeated the Soviet lunar impacts as part of their secondary missions.[11][12] HP HSTNN-I81C Battery
Failures included three American attemptsin 1962 to hard land small seismometer packages released by the main Ranger spacecraft. These surface packages were to use retrorockets to survive landing, unlike the parent vehicle, which was designed to deliberately crash onto the surface. HP HSTNN-I83C Battery
The final three Ranger probes performed successful high altitude lunar reconnaissance photography missions during intentional crash impacts between 2.62 and 2.68 kilometres per second (9,400 and 9,600 km/h).
Pioneer missions
Three different designs of Pioneer lunar probes were flown on three different modified ICBMs.
HP HSTNN-I84C Battery
Those flown on the Thor booster modified with an Able upper stage carried an infrared image scanning television system with a resolution of 1 milliradian to study the Moon's surface, an ionization chamber to measure radiationin space, a diaphragm/microphone assembly to detect micrometeorites, a magnetometer, HP HSTNN-IB0N Battery
and temperature-variable resistors to monitor spacecraft internal thermal conditions. The first, a mission managed by the United States Air Force, exploded during launch; all subsequent Pioneer lunar flights had NASA as the lead management organization. HP HSTNN-IB0W Battery
The next two returned to Earth and burned up upon reentry into the atmosphere after achieved maximum altitudes of around 70,000 and 900 miles (1,400 km), far short of the roughly 250,000 miles (400,000 km) required to reach the vicinity of the Moon.
NASA then collaborated with the United States Army's Ballistic Missile Agency to fly two extremely small cone-shaped probes on the Juno ICBM, HP HSTNN-IB0X Battery
carrying onlyphotocells which would be triggered by the light of the Moon and a lunar radiation environment experiment using a Geiger-Müller tube detector. The first of these reached an altitude of only around 64,000 miles (103,000 km), serendipitously gathering data that established the presence of the Van Allen radiation belts before reentering Earth's atmosphere. HP HSTNN-IB1E Battery
The second passed by the Moon at a distance of more than 37,000 miles (60,000 km), twice as far as planned and too far away to trigger either of the on-board scientific instruments, yet still becoming the first American spacecraft to reach a solar orbit. HP HSTNN-LB10 Battery
The final Pioneer lunar probe design consisted of four "paddlewheel" solar panels extending from a one-meter diameter spherical spin-stabilized spacecraft body that was equipped to take images of the lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, HP HSTNN-OB0X Battery
record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, study radiation, measure magnetic fields, detect low frequency electromagnetic waves in space and use a sophisticated integrated propulsion system for maneuvering and orbit insertion as well. None of the four spacecraft built in this series of probes survived launch on its Atlas ICBM outfitted with an Able upper stage. HP HSTNN-OB0Y Battery
Following the unsuccessful Atlas-Able Pioneer probes, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory embarked upon an unmanned spacecraft development program whose modular design could be used to support both lunar and interplanetary exploration missions. The interplanetary versions were known as Mariners; lunar versions wereRangers. HP HSTNN-Q47C Battery
JPL envisioned three versions of the Ranger lunar probes: Block I prototypes, which would carry various radiation detectors in test flights to a very high Earth orbit that came nowhere near the Moon; Block II, which would try to accomplish the first Moon landing by hard landing a seismometer package; HP HSTNN-Q48C Battery
and Block III, which would crash onto the lunar surface without any braking rockets while taking very high resolution wide-area photographs of the Moon during their descent.
Ranger missions
The Ranger 1 and 2 Block I missions were virtually identical. HP HSTNN-Q49C Battery
Spacecraft experiments included a Lyman-alpha telescope, a Rubidium-vapor magnetometer, electrostatic analyzers, medium-energy-range particle detectors, two triple coincidence telescopes, a cosmic-ray integrating ionization chamber, cosmic dustdetectors, and scintillation counters. HP HSTNN-Q50C Battery
The goal was to place these Block I spacecraft in a very high Earth orbit with an apogee of 110,000 kilometres (68,000 mi) and a perigee of 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi).[17] From that vantage point, scientists could make direct measurements of the magnetosphere over a period of many months while engineers perfected new methods to routinely track and communicate with spacecraft over such large distances. HP HSTNN-Q51C Battery
Such practice was deemed vital to be assured of capturing high-bandwidth television transmissions from the Moon during a one-shot fifteen minute time window in subsequent Block II and Block III lunar descents. Both Block I missions suffered failures of the new Agena upper stage and never left low earth parking orbit after launch; both burned up upon reentry after only a few days. HP HSTNN-Q60C Battery
The first attempts to perform a Moon landing took place in 1962 during the Rangers 3, 4 and 5 missions flown by the United States.[5][11][13] All three Block II missions basic vehicles were 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, HP HSTNN-Q61C Battery
a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of 5080 pound-force (22.6 kN),[11] and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. This lander (code-named Tonto) was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquidfreon. HP HSTNN-Q62C Battery
A 42 kg (56 pounds) 30-centimetre-diameter (0.98 ft) metal payload sphere floated and was free to rotate in a liquid freon reservoir contained in the landing sphere. This payload sphere contained six silver-cadmium batteries to power a fifty-milliwatt radio transmitter, a temperature sensitive voltage controlled oscillator to measure lunar surface temperatures, HP HSTNN-Q63C Battery
and a seismometer that was designed with sensitivity high enough to detect the impact of a five pound meteorite on the opposite side of the Moon. Weight was distributed in the payload sphere so it would rotate in its liquid blanket to place the seismometer into an upright and operational position no matter what the final resting orientation of the external landing sphere. HP HSTNN-Q64C Battery
After landing plugs were to be opened allowing the freon to evaporate and the payload sphere to settle into upright contact with the landing sphere. The batteries were sized to allow up to three months of operation for the payload sphere. Various mission constraints limited the landing site to Oceanus Procellarum on the lunar equator, HP HSTNN-UB0W Battery
which the lander ideally would reach 66 hours after launch.
No cameras were carried by the Ranger landers, and no pictures were to be captured from the lunar surface during the mission. Instead, the 3.1 metres (10 ft) Ranger Block II mother ship carried a 200-scan-line television camera which was to capture images during the free-fall descent to the lunar surface. HP HSTNN-UB1G Battery
The camera was designed to transmit a picture every 10 seconds.[11] Seconds before impact, at 5 and 0.6 kilometre (3.1 and 0.37 mi) above the lunar surface, the Ranger mother ships took picture (which may be viewed here. Other instruments gathering data before the mother ship crashed onto the Moon were a gamma ray spectrometer to measure overall lunar chemical composition and a radar altimeter. HP HSTNN-YB0W Battery
The radar altimeter was to give a signal ejecting the landing capsule and its solid-fueled braking rocket overboard from the Block II mother ship. The braking rocket was to slow and the landing sphere to a dead stop at 330 metres (1,080 ft) above the surface and separate, allowing the landing sphere to free fall once more and hit the surface. HP HSTNN-YB0X Battery
On Ranger 3, failure of the Atlas guidance system and a software error aboard the Agena upper stage combined to put the spacecraft on a course that would miss the Moon. Attempts to salvage lunar photography during a flyby of the Moon were thwarted by in-flight failure of the onboard flight computer. HP MU06047 Battery
This was probably because of prior heat sterilization of the spacecraft by keeping it above the boiling point of water for 24 hours on the ground, to protect the Moon from being contaminated by Earth organisms. Heat sterilization was also blamed for subsequent in-flight failures of the spacecraft computer on Ranger 4 and the power subsystem on Ranger 5. HP MU06055 Battery
Only Ranger 4 reached the Moon in an uncontrolled crash impact on the far side of the Moon.[citation needed]
Heat sterilization was discontinued for the final four Block III Ranger probes.These replaced the Block II landing capsule and its retrorocket with a heavier, HP MU06062 Battery
more capable television system to support landing site selection for upcoming Apollo manned Moon landing missions. Six cameras were designed to take thousands of high-altitude photographs in the final twenty minute period before crashing on the lunar surface. Camera resolution was 1,132 scan lines, HP MU06 Battery
far higher than the 525 lines found in a typical American 1964 home television. While Ranger 6 suffered a failure of this camera system and returned no photographs despite an otherwise successful flight, the subsequent Ranger 7 mission to Mare Cognitum was a complete success. HP MU09 Battery
Breaking the six-year string of failures in American attempts to photograph the Moon at close range, the Ranger 7 mission was viewed as a national turning point and instrumental in allowing the key 1965 NASA budget appropriation to pass through the United States Congress intact without a reduction in funds for the Apollo manned Moon landing program. HP MU09XL Battery
Subsequent successes with Ranger 8 and Ranger 9 further buoyed American hopes.
Soviet unmanned soft landings (1966–1976)
The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union, performed the first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February. Airbags protected its 99 kilograms (220 lb) ejectable capsule which survived an impact speed of over 15 metres per second (54 km/h).[19] HP NBP6A174B1 Battery
Luna 13 duplicated this feat with a similar Moon landing on 24 December 1966. Both returned panoramic photographs that were the first views from the lunar surface.[20]
Luna 16 was the first robotic probe to land on the Moon and safely return a sample of lunar back to Earth.[21] HP NBP6A174 Battery
It represented the first lunar sample return mission by the Soviet Union, and was the third lunar sample return mission overall, following the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions. This mission was later successfully repeated by Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976).
In 1970 and 1973 two Lunokhod ("Moonwalker") robotic lunar rovers were delivered to the Moon, HP NBP6A175B1 Battery
where they successfully operated for 10 and 4 months respectively, covering 10.5 km (Lunokhod 1) and 37 km (Lunokhod 2). These rover missions were in operation concurrently with the Zond and Luna series of Moon flyby, orbiter and landing missions. HP NBP6A175 Battery
American unmanned soft landings (1966–1968)
The American robotic Surveyor program was part of an effort to locate a safe site on the Moon for a human landing and test under actual lunar conditions the radar and landing systems required to make a true controlled touchdown. HP WD548AA Battery
Five of Surveyor's seven missions made successful unmanned Moon landings. Surveyor 3 was visited two years after its Moon landing by the crew of Apollo 12. They removed parts of it for examination back on Earth to determine the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment.
HP WD549AA Battery
Transition from direct ascent landings to lunar orbit operations
Within four months of each other in early 1966 the Soviet Union and the United States had accomplished successful Moon landings with unmanned spacecraft. HP 513130-321 Battery
To the general public both countries had demonstrated roughly equal technical capabilities by returning photographic images from the surface of the Moon. These pictures provided a key affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether or not lunar soil would support upcoming manned landers with their much greater weight. HP 535808-001 Battery
However, the Luna 9 hard landing of a ruggedized sphere using airbags at a 30-mile (48 km)-per-hour ballistic impact speed had much more in common with the failed 1962 Ranger landing attempts and their planned 100-mile (160 km)-per-hour impacts than with the Surveyor 1 soft landing on three footpads using its radar-controlled, adjustable-thrust retrorocket. HP 591998-141 Battery
While Luna 9 and Surveyor 1 were both major national accomplishments, only Surveyor 1 had reached its landing site employing key technologies that would be needed for a crewed flight. Thus as of mid-1966, the United States had begun to pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the so-called Space Race to land a man on the Moon. HP 593576-001 Battery
Advances in other areas were necessary before manned spacecraft could follow unmanned ones to the surface of the Moon. Of particular importance was developing the expertise to perform flight operations in lunar orbit. Ranger, Surveyor and initial Luna Moon landing attempts all utilized flight paths from Earth that traveled directly to the lunar surface without first placing the spacecraft in a lunar orbit. HP HSTNN-1B1D Battery
Such direct ascents use a minimum amount of fuel for unmanned spacecraft on a one-way trip.
In contrast, manned vehicles need additional fuel after a lunar landing to enable a return trip back to Earth for the crew. Leaving this massive amount of required Earth-return fuel in lunar orbit until it is actually HP HSTNN-OB89 Battery
used later in the mission is far more efficient than taking such fuel down to the lunar surface in a Moon landing and then hauling it all back into space yet again, working against lunar gravity both ways. Such considerations lead logically to a lunar orbit rendezvous mission profile for a manned Moon landing. HP HSTNN-W79C-7 Battery
Accordingly, beginning in mid-1966 both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. naturally progressed into missions which featured lunar orbit operations as a necessary prerequisite to a manned Moon landing. The primary goals of these initial unmanned orbiters were extensive photographic mapping of the entire lunar surface for the selection of manned landing sites and, HP HSTNN-XB89 Battery
for the Soviets, the checkout of radio communications gear that would be used in future soft landings.
An unexpected major discovery from initial lunar orbiters were vast volumes of dense materials beneath the surface of the Moon's maria. HP NBP8A157B1 Battery
Such mass concentrations ("mascons") can send a manned mission dangerously off course in the final minutes of a Moon landing when aiming for a relatively small landing zone that is smooth and safe. Mascons were also found over a longer period of time to greatly disturb the orbits of low-altitude satellites around the Moon, HP NZ375AA Battery
making their orbits unstable and forcing an inevitable crash on the lunar surface in the relatively short period of months to a few years. Thus all lunar orbiter satellites eventually become unintentional "lunar landers" at the end of their missions.
Controlling the location of impact for spent lunar orbiters can have scientific value. HP HSTNN-1B52 Battery
For example, in 1999 the NASA Lunar Prospector orbiter was deliberately targeted to impact a permanently shadowed area of Shoemaker Crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that energy from the impact would vaporize suspected shadowed ice deposits in the crater and liberate a water vapor plume that would be detectable from Earth. HP HSTNN-1B89 Battery
No such plume was observed. However, a small vial of ashes from the body of pioneer lunar scientist Eugene Shoemaker was delivered by the Lunar Prospector to the crater named in his honor – currently the only human remains on the Moon today.
Soviet circumlunar loop flights (1967–1970)
It is possible to aim a spacecraft from Earth so that it will loop around the Moon and return to Earth without actually entering lunar orbit, HP HSTNN-IB89 Battery
following the so-called free return trajectory. Such circumlunar loop missions are simpler than actual lunar orbit missions because rockets for lunar orbit braking and Earth return are not required. However, a manned circumlunar loop trip poses significant challenges above and beyond those found in a manned low-Earth-orbit mission, HP HSTNN-I62C-7 Battery
offering valuable lessons in preparation for a manned Moon landing. Foremost among these are mastering the demands of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere upon returning from the Moon. Manned Earth-orbiting vehicles such as the Space Shuttle return to Earth from speeds of around 17,000 miles per hour (27,400 km/h, 7,600 m/s). HP HSTNN-I61C-5 Battery
Due to the effects of gravity, a vehicle returning from the Moon hits Earth's atmosphere at a much higher speed of around 25,000 miles per hour (40,200 km/h, 11,200 m/s). The g-loading on astronauts during the resulting deceleration can be at the limits of human endurance even during a nominal reentry. HP HSTNN-I60C-5 Battery
Slight variations in the vehicle flight path and reentry angle during a return from the Moon can easily result in fatal levels of deceleration force.
Achieving a manned circumlunar loop flight prior to a manned lunar landing became a primary goal of the Soviets with theirZond spacecraft program. HP 535753-001 Battery
The first three Zonds were unmanned planetary probes; after that, the Zond name was transferred to a completely separate manned program. The initial focus of these later Zonds was extensive testing of required high-speed reentry techniques. This focus was not shared by the Americans,
who chose instead to bypass the stepping stone of a manned circumlunar loop mission and never developed a separate spacecraft for this purpose.
Initial manned spaceflights in the early 1960s placed a single person in low Earth orbit during the Soviet Vostok and American Mercury programs. HP 516479-121 Battery
A two-flight extension of the Vostok program known as Voskhod effectively used Vostok capsules with their ejection seats removed to achieve Soviet space firsts of multiple person crews in 1964 and spacewalks in early 1965. These capabilities were later demonstrated by the Americans in ten Gemini low Earth orbit missions throughout 1965 and 1966, HP HSTNN-DB94 Battery
using a totally new second-generation spacecraft design that had little in common with the earlier Mercury. These Gemini missions went on to prove critical techniques for orbital rendezvous and docking that were crucial to a manned lunar landing mission profile.
After the end of the Gemini program, HP HSTNN-IB93 Battery
the Soviets Union began flying their second-generation Zond manned spacecraft in 1967 with the ultimate goal of looping a cosmonaut around the Moon and returning him immediately to Earth. The Zond spacecraft was launched with the simpler and already operational Proton launch rocket,
HP HSTNN-IB94 Battery
unlike the parallel Soviet manned Moon landing effort also underway at the time based on third-generation Soyuz spacecraft requiring development of the advanced N-1 booster. The Soviets thus believed they could achieve a manned Zond circumlunar flight years before an American manned lunar landing and so score a propaganda victory. HP HSTNN-LB93 Battery
However, significant development problems delayed the Zond program and the success of the American Apollo lunar landing program led to the eventual termination of the Zond effort.
Like Zond, Apollo Moon flights were generally launched on a free return trajectory that would return them to Earth via a circumlunar loop in the event that a Service Module malfunction failed to place them in lunar orbit as planned. HP HSTNN-LB94 Battery
This option was implemented after an explosion aboard the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, which is the only manned circumlunar loop mission flown to date.
Zond 5 was the first spacecraft to carry life from Earth to the vicinity of the Moon and return, initiating the final lap of the Space Race with its payload of turtles, insects, plants and bacteria. HP HSTNN-OB93 Battery
Despite the failure suffered in its final moments, the Zond 6 mission was reported by Soviet media as being a success as well. Although hailed worldwide as remarkable achievements, both of these Zond missions actually flew off-nominal reentry trajectories resulting in deceleration forces that would have been fatal to human crewmembers had they been aboard. HP HSTNN-OB94 Battery
As a result, the Soviets secretly planned to continue unmanned Zond tests until their reliability to support manned flight had been demonstrated. However, due to NASA's continuing problems with the lunar module, and because of CIA reports of a potential Soviet manned circumlunar flight in late 1968, HP HSTNN-XB93 Battery
NASA fatefully changed the flight plan of Apollo 8 from an Earth-orbit lunar module test to a lunar orbit mission scheduled for late December 1968.
In early December 1968 the launch window to the Moon opened for the Soviet launch site in Baikonur, giving the USSR their final chance to beat the US to the Moon. HP HSTNN-XB94 Battery
Cosmonauts went on alert and asked to fly the Zond spacecraft then in final countdown at Baikonour on the first manned trip to the Moon. Ultimately, however, the Soviet Politburo decided the risk of crew death was unacceptable given the combined poor performance to that point of Zond/Proton and so scrubbed the launch of a manned Soviet lunar mission. HP NU089AA Battery
Their decision proved to be a wise one, since this unnumbered Zond mission was destroyed in another unmanned test when it was finally launched several weeks later.
By this time flights of the third generation American Apollo spacecraft had begun. Far more capable than the Zond, HP HSTNN-DB95 Battery
the Apollo spacecraft had the necessary rocket power to slip into and out of lunar orbit and to make course adjustments required for a safe reentry during the return to Earth. The Apollo 8 mission carried out the first manned trip to the Moon on 24 December 1968, HP HSTNN-IB95 Battery
certifying the Saturn V booster for manned use and flying not a circumlunar loop but instead a full ten orbits around the Moon before returning safely to Earth. Apollo 10 then performed a full dress rehearsal of a manned Moon landing in May 1969. This mission stopped short at ten miles (16 km) altitude above the lunar surface, HP HSTNN-LB95 Battery
performing necessary low-altitude mapping of trajectory-altering mascons using a factory prototype lunar module that was too overweight to allow a successful landing. With the failure of the unmanned Soviet sample return Moon landing attemptLuna 15 in July 1969, the stage was set for Apollo 11. HP HSTNN-XB95 Battery
Manned Moon landings (1969–1972)
The U.S. Moon exploration program originated during the Eisenhower administration. In a series of mid-1950s articles inCollier's magazine, Wernher von Braun had popularized the idea of a manned expedition to the Moon to establish a lunar base. HP NU090AA Battery
A manned Moon landing posed several daunting technical challenges to the U.S. and USSR. Besides guidance and weight management,atmospheric re-entry without ablative overheating was a major hurdle. After the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, von Braun promoted a plan for the United States Army to establish a military lunar outpost by 1965. HP 500028-142 Battery
After the early Soviet successes, especially Yuri Gagarin's flight, U.S. President John F. Kennedy looked for an American project that would capture the public imagination. He asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to make recommendations on a scientific endeavor that would prove U.S. world leadership. HP 500029-142 Battery
The proposals included non-space options such as massive irrigation projects to benefit the Third World. The Soviets, at the time, had more powerful rockets than the United States, which gave them an advantage in some kinds of space mission. Advances in U.S. nuclear weapons technology had led to smaller, lighter warheads, and consequently, rockets with smaller payload capacities. HP HSTNN-IB82 Battery
By comparison, Soviet nuclear weapons were much heavier, and the powerful R-7 rocket was developed to carry them. More modest potential missions such as flying around the Moon without landing or establishing a space lab in orbit (both were proposed by Kennedy to von Braun) were determined to offer too much advantage to the Soviets, HP HSTNN-IB83 Battery
since the U.S. would have to develop a heavy rocket to match the Soviets. A Moon landing, however, would capture world imagination while functioning as propaganda.
Mindful that the Apollo Program would economically benefit most of the key states in the next election—particularly his home state of Texas because NASA's base was in Houston—HP NB801AA Battery
Johnson championed the Apollo program. This superficially indicated action to alleviate the fictional "missile gap" between the U.S. and USSR, a campaign promise of Kennedy's in the 1960 election. The Apollo project allowed continued development of dual-use technology. HP 530975-341 Battery
Johnson also advised that for anything less than a lunar landing the USSR had a good chance of beating the U.S. For these reasons, Kennedy seized on Apollo as the ideal focus for American efforts in space. He ensured continuing funding, shielding space spending from the 1963 tax cut and diverting money from other NASA projects. HP 579320-001 Battery
This dismayed NASA's leader, James E. Webb, who urged support for other scientific work.
The Saturn V booster was the key to U.S. Moon landings. The Saturn had a perfect record of zero failures in thirteen launches.
Whatever he said in private, Kennedy needed a different message to gain public support to uphold what he was saying and his views. HP AT902AA Battery
Later in 1963, Kennedy asked Vice President Johnson to investigate the possible technological and scientific benefits of a Moon mission. Johnson concluded that the benefits were limited, but, with the help of scientists at NASA, he put together a powerful case, citing possible medical breakthroughs and interesting pictures of Earth from space. HP HSTNN-DB91 Battery
For the program to succeed, its proponents would have to defeat criticism from politicians on the left, who wanted more money spent on social programs, and on those on the right, who favored a more military project. By emphasizing the scientific payoff and playing on fears of Soviet space dominance, HP HSTNN-OB91 Battery
Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33 percent two years earlier. After Johnson became President in 1963, his continuing defense of the program allowed it to succeed in 1969, as Kennedy had originally hoped. HP HSTNN-OB92 Battery
Soviet strategy
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev did not relish "defeat" by any other power, but equally did not relish funding such an expensive project. In October 1963 he said that the USSR was "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the Moon," HP HSTNN-XB91 Battery
while insisting that the Soviets had not dropped out of the race. Only after another year would the USSR fully commit itself to a Moon-landing attempt, which ultimately failed.
At the same time, Kennedy had suggested various joint programs, including a possible Moon landing by Soviet and American astronauts and the development of better weather-monitoring satellites. HP HSTNN-XB92 Battery
Khrushchev, sensing an attempt by Kennedy to steal Russian space technology, rejected the idea: if the USSR went to the Moon, it would go alone. Korolyov, the RSA's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz craft and the N-1 launcher rocket that would have the capability of carrying out a manned Moon landing. HP 513128-251 Battery
Khrushchev directed Korolyov's design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a manned cislunar flight in 1966.
HP 513128-361 Battery
In 1964 the new Soviet leadership gave Korolyov the backing for a Moon landing effort and brought all manned projects under his direction. With Korolyov's death and the failure of the first Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet Moon landing program quickly unraveled. HP 535806-001 Battery
The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei Leonov on the Moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and then cancellation. HP NZ374AA Battery
Apollo missions
In total, twenty-four American astronauts have traveled to the Moon. Three have made the trip twice, and twelve have walked on its surface. Apollo 8 was a lunar-orbit-only mission, Apollo 10 included undocking and Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI), HP HSTNN-DB90 Battery
followed by LM staging to CSM redocking, while Apollo 13, originally scheduled as a landing, ended up as a lunar fly-by, by means of free return trajectory; thus, none of these missions made landings. Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 never left Earth orbit. Apart from the inherent dangers of manned Moon expeditions as seen with Apollo 13, HP HSTNN-XB90 Battery
one reason for their cessation according to astronaut Alan Bean is the cost it imposes in government subsidies.
Other aspects of the Apollo Moon landings
Unlike other international rivalries, the Space Race has remained unaffected in a direct way regarding the desire for territorial expansion. HP 292389-001 Battery
After the successful landings on the Moon, the U.S. explicitly disclaimed the right to ownership of any part of the Moon.
President Richard Nixon had speechwriter William Safire prepare a condolence speech for delivery in the event that Armstrong and Aldrin became marooned on the Moon's surface and could not be rescued.[23] HP 337607-001 Battery
In the 1940s writer Arthur C. Clarke forecast that man would reach the Moon by 2000.
On 16 August 2006, the Associated Press reported that NASA is missing the original Slow-scan television tapes (which were made before the scan conversion for conventional TV) of the Apollo 11 Moon walk. HP 337607-002 Battery
Some news outlets have mistakenly reported that the SSTV tapes were found in Western Australia, but those tapes were only recordings of data from the Apollo 11 Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package.
Chandrayaan-1 (India)
Chandrayaan-1 was India's first unmanned lunar probe. HP 337607-003 Battery
It was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in October 2008, and operated until August 2009.[27] The mission, including a lunar orbiter and an impactor, was launched by a modified version of the PSLV, PSLV C11 on 22 October 2008 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, HP 338794-001 Battery
Nellore District, Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km north of Chennai, at 06:22 IST (00:52 UTC). The mission was a major boost to India's space program, as India researched and developed its own technology in order to explore the Moon. The vehicle was successfully inserted into lunar orbit on 8 November 2008, and the impactor, HP 342661-001 Battery
the Moon Impact Probe, impacted near Shackleton Crater at the south pole of the lunar surface at 14 November 2008, 20:31 IST.[28] The estimated cost for the project was 3.86 billion Indian rupees (US$80 million).
Weighing 34 kilograms (75 lb), the box shaped impactor carried three instruments—a video imaging system, a mass spectrometer and a radar altimeter. HP 345027-001 Battery
The video imaging system took pictures of the Moon’s surface from high altitudes, relaying those pictures back to Earth during the descent. The mass spectrometer made measurements of the extremely thin lunar atmosphere. The radar altimeter measured the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface, testing that technology for future soft landing missions. HP 346970-001 Battery
The probe did not include braking rockets and was destroyed upon impacting the lunar surface at its planned speed of 5,000 kilometres per hour (3,100 mph).[29]
The orbiter completed 3,000 orbits acquiring 70,000 images of the lunar surface. They were first transmitted to Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu nearBangalore, HP 361742-001 Battery
and then to the Indian Space Research Organisation Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore. ISRO claims that the landing sites of theApollo Moon missions have been mapped by the orbiter using multiple payloads. Six of the sites have been mapped including that of Apollo 11, the first mission that brought humans on the Moon.[32] HP 367759-001 Battery
The Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument, provided by NASA, confirmed the presence of water on the Moon.[33][34] This was also confirmed by the mass spectrometer on the MIP.[35]
Chang'e 1 (China)
The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 1 executed a controlled crash onto the surface of the Moon on 1 March 2009, 2044 GMT, after a 16-month mission.[36] HP 371785-001 Battery
US orbital missions since 2009
The most recent lunar mission has been the NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The Lunar Precursor Robotic Program (LPRP) is a program of robotic spacecraft missions which NASA will use to prepare for future human spaceflight missions to the Moon.[37] HP 371786-001 Battery
Two missions, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (or LCROSS), originally planned to be launched in October 2008,[38] but was launched on 18 June 2009.[39]
Other moon landings
Progress in space exploration has recently broadened the phrase moon landing to include other moons in the solar system as well. HP 372772-001 Battery
The Huygens probe of theCassini mission to Saturn performed a successful unmanned moon landing on Titan in 2005. Similarly, the Soviet probe Phobos 2 came within 120 miles (190 km) of performing an unmanned moon landing on Mars' moon Phobos in 1989 before radio contact with that lander was suddenly lost. HP 383220-001 Battery
A similar Russian sample return mission called Fobos-Grunt ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian) launched in November 2011, but stalled in low-earth orbit. There is widespread interest in performing a future moon landing on Jupiter's moon Europa to drill down and explore the possible liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface. HP 395789-001 Battery
Proposed future missions
Main article: List of current and future lunar missions
The most recently launched lunar orbiter is China's Chang'e 2, which was launched in early October 2010. China is also planning to land motorized rovers and collect samples in the Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4 missions and return lunar soil samples by 2018.[40] HP 396008-001 Battery
ISRO, the Indian National Space agency, is planning a second version of Chandrayaan named Chandrayaan 2. According to former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, "The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) hopes to land two motorised rovers – one Indian and another Russian – on the Moon in 2014, as a part of its second Chandrayaan mission. HP 398876-001 Battery
The rover will be designed to move on wheels on the lunar surface, pick up samples of soil or rocks, do on-site chemical analysis and send the data to the mother-spacecraft Chandrayaan II, which will be orbiting above. Chandrayaan II will transmit the data to Earth." The payloads have already been finalized.[41][42] HP 411462-421 Battery
ISRO has mentioned that due to weight restrictions it will not be carrying any overseas payloads on this mission. The lander weight is projected to be 1,250 kg, and the spacecraft will be launched by the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle.
Russia's Luna-Glob 1 is expected to be launched in 2015. HP 417066-001 Battery
In 2007 the head of the Russian Space Agency announced plans to send cosmonauts to the Moon by 2025 and establish a permanent robotically operated base there in 2027–2032.[43]
The Google Lunar X Prize competition offers a $20 million award for the first privately funded team to land a robotic probe on the Moon. HP 916-2150 Battery
Like the Ansari X Prizebefore it, the competition aims to advance the state of the art in private space exploration.[44] Of the several competing teams, Puli Space Technologies plans to launch in 2014[45] and Astrobotic Technology plans to launch in 2014 or 2015[46]
Hoax accusations
Some people insist that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax. HP BAT0302001 Battery
Their accusations flourish in part because enthusiastic predictions that Moon landings would become commonplace have not yet come to pass. However, empirical evidence is readily available to show that manned moon landings did indeed occur. Anyone on Earth with an appropriate laser andtelescope system can bounce laser beams off three retroreflector arrays left on the Moon by Apollo 11,[47] HP CGR-B1870AE Battery
14 and 15, verifying deployment of the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment at historically documented Apollo Moon landing sites and so proving equipment constructed on Earth was successfully transported to the surface of the Moon. In addition, in August 2009 NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter began to send back high resolution photos of the Apollo landing sites.
HP DG103A Battery
These photos show not only the large Descent Stages of the lunar landers left behind but also tracks of the astronauts' walking paths in the lunar dust.
The Apollo 11 missing tapes are missing slow-scan television (SSTV) recordings of the lunar transmissions broadcast during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, which was the first time human beings walked on the Moon. HP DM842A Battery
The tapes carried SSTV and telemetry data recorded onto analog data recording tape. The SSTV data was recorded as a backup against any failure of the live television broadcasts.[1] To allow broadcast of the SSTV transmission on standard television, a real-time conversion from SSTV format was done. HP DP390A Battery
The converted video of the moonwalk was broadcast live around the world on July 21, 1969 (UTC). Many videotapes and kinescopes were made of this broadcast as it happened, and these have never been missing.[2] Meanwhile, the missing tapes which carried recordings of the SSTV signal as transmitted from the Moon, HP DP399A Battery
but before undergoing scan conversion, are believed to have been erased and reused by NASA, along with many thousands of other tapes. (NASA was faced with a shortage of quality data tapes in the early 1980s due to a change in the manufacturing process in the mid 1970s. This caused tapes that were no longer needed to be reused.)[1] HP EF419A Battery
If the original SSTV format tapes were found, modern technology could be easily and cheaply used to make a higher-quality conversion, yielding better images than those originally seen. There are several still photographs, along with a few short segments of super 8 movie film taken of a video monitor in Australia, which show the SSTV transmission before it was converted. HP EG417AA Battery
In 2009 NASA gathered old copies of the converted video and paid to have them processed by Lowry Digital. These restorations were released in 2010.
Only limited bandwidth was available to transmit the video signal, which needed to be multiplexed with other communication and telemetry channels beamed from the Lunar Module back to the Earth, HP EV087AA Battery
so video of the Apollo 11 moonwalk was transmitted from the Apollo TV camera in a SSTV format of 10 frames per second at 320 lines of resolution. These SSTV signals were received by radio telescopes at Parkes Observatory, the Goldstone tracking station and Honeysuckle Creek tracking station.[3][4] HP EV088AA Battery
The format as received on Earth was incompatible with existing NTSC, PAL and SECAM television standards, so a conversion was needed for worldwide broadcast. This live conversion was crude: Simply put, the raw unconverted SSTV signal was split into two branches, with one branch sent to an analog data tape recorder where it was recorded onto fourteen-inch reels of one-inch-wide, HP EX941AA Battery
fourteen-track analog magnetic data tapes at 120 inches per second.[5] Each of the three tracking stations would have used approximately 15 tapes for recording telemetry during the moonwalk. The other SSTV signal branch, rather than being electronically processed and converted, HP EX942AA Battery
was sent to a high-quality video monitor where a conventional television camera (using the NTSC broadcast standard of 525 lines resolution at 30 frames per second) merely re-photographed its screen.[6] Optical limitations of both monitor and camera significantly lowered contrast, HP F1466A Battery
brightness and resolution of the original SSTV video whilst also putting noise in the broadcast. The video seen on home television sets was further degraded in quality by the very long and noisy analog transmission path through which the converted signal was sent, first by satellite from the receiving ground stations to Houston, HP F1739A Battery
Texas and thence by microwave relay transmission to New York, from where it was broadcast live to the United States and the world.
This low quality optical conversion of the Apollo 11 moonwalk video images, made with a TV camera taking pictures of a video monitor, is what was widely recorded in real-time onto videotape and kinescope. HP F2019 Battery
Recordings of this conversion were not lost and have long been available to the public (along with much higher quality video from later Project Apollo missions). If the SSTV tapes were to be found, modern technology would easily allow the production of higher quality television pictures from the Apollo 11 moonwalk than have ever been seen, HP F2019A Battery
other than by the few technicians and others who watched the SSTV transmission on video monitors as it was received.[7] An amateur 8 mm film movie of about 15 minutes of Apollo 11 SSTV images, taken from another monitor before the conversion step, was rediscovered in 2005 and is available on DVD.[4] HP F2019B Battery
Search for the missing tapes
News that these analog data tapes were missing broke on August 5, 2006 when the printed and online versions of The Sydney Morning Herald published a story with the title One giant blunder for mankind: how NASA lost moon pictures.[8] HP F2024 Battery
The missing tapes were among over 700 boxes of magnetic data tapes recorded throughout the Apollo program which have not been found.[5]On August 16, 2006 NASA announced its official search saying, "The original tapes may be at the Goddard Space Flight Center… or at another location within the NASA archiving system", HP F2024A Battery
"NASA engineers are hopeful that when the tapes are found they can use today's digital technology to provide a version of the moonwalk that is much better quality than what we have today."[9] NASA also had ongoing research reasons for finding these higher resolution tapes, HP F2024B Battery
since Project Orion was planned to carry out tasks similar to those of the original Apollo program, to "Get a team of astronauts to the moon and back safely".[10]
The Goddard Center's Data Evaluation Laboratory has the only known surviving piece of equipment which can read the missing tapes and was set to be closed in October 2006, HP F2299A Battery
causing some fear that, even if the tapes were later found, there would be no ready way to read and copy them.[11] However, equipment that could read the tapes was maintained.[3]
On November 1, 2006 Cosmos Magazine reported that some NASA telemetry tapes from the Apollo project era had been found in a small marine science HP F3172A Battery
laboratory within the main physics building at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. One of these tapes was sent to NASA for analysis. It carried no video but did show that if any of the tapes are ever found, data could likely be read from them.[12][13] HP F4098A Battery
NASA news conference
On July 16, 2009 NASA held a media briefing in which the agency released somewhat crisper-looking (and otherwise cleaned-up), post-conversion video from the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, some of which had been in storage for nearly 40 years. HP F4486A Battery
They meanwhile had concluded that the reels of tape with the SSTV signal were shipped from Australia to Goddard and then routinely erased and reused a few years later. Moreover, a backup copy of the tapes which had been made in Australia was also erased after Goddard received the reels. HP F4486B Battery
There is also documentation that two hours of the Apollo 11 moonwalk SSTV were recorded in Australia on a different tape format but likewise, these other tapes have not been found. The SSTV signal had been recorded on telemetry data tapes mostly as a backup which could be held HP F4809A Battery
in readiness and played back later if the real-time conversion and broadcast around the world failed. Since this real-time broadcast indeed worked and was widely recorded on both videotape and film, the backup video was not deemed important at the time.[3] HP F4812A Battery
NASA stated that it did find several post-conversion copies of the video that are of higher quality than has been seen by the public. These include videotape recorded in Sydney after the conversion but before the satellite transmission around the world, videotape from CBS News archives (direct from NASA, without commentary), and kinescopes at Johnson Space Center. HP HSTNN-DB02 Battery
In 2009, NASA released some partially restored samples.[ The full restoration of the footage, about three hours long, was completed in December 2009. Highlights of this fully enhanced video were shown to the public for the first time at the Australian Geographic Society Awards on 6 October 2010, where Buzz Aldrin was the guest of honor. HP HSTNN-DB20 Battery
Lunokhod (Russian: Луноход, "Moonwalker") was a series of Soviet robotic lunar rovers designed to land on the Moon between 1969 and 1977. The 1969 Lunokhod 1A was destroyed during launch, the 1970 Lunokhod 1 and the 1973 Lunokhod 2 landed on the moon and the 1977 Lunokhod was never launched. HP HSTNN-IB04 Battery
The successful missions were in operation concurrently with the Zond and Luna series of Moon flyby, orbiter and landing missions. The Lunokhods were primarily designed to support the Soviet manned moon missions and to be used as automatic remote-controlled robots to explore the surface and return pictures. HP HSTNN-IB09 Battery
The Lunokhods were transported to the lunar surface by Luna spacecraft, which were launched by Proton rockets. The moon lander part of the Luna spacecraft for Lunokhods were similar to the ones for sample return missions. The Lunokhods were designed by Alexander Kemurdjian[1] at NPO Lavochkin. HP HSTNN-IB20 Battery
Not until the 1997 Mars Pathfinder was another remote-controlled vehicle put on an extraterrestrial body. In 2010, nearly forty years after the 1971 loss of signal from Lunokhod 1, the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed its tracks and final location, and researchers, using a telescopic pulsed-laser rangefinder, detected the robot's retroreflector. HP HSTNN-LB31 Battery
Lunokhod's original primary mission was the survey of sites for later manned landings and lunar bases. It was intended that the spacecraft would provide a radio beacon for precision landings of manned spacecraft. Also, the vehicle was designed to be used by a single cosmonaut to move from the primary LK lander to the back-up LK Landers in case of failure. HP HSTNN-OB20 Battery
Instead, it was used for remote exploration of the lunar surface after the successful Apollo manned lunar landings.
In mid-1968, at the KIP-10 or NIP-10 (КИП-10 or НИП-10) in the secret village Shkolnoye (ru:Школьное (Крым)), near Simferopol, a lunodrom (moondrome) was built. HP HSTNN-UB02 Battery
It covered an area of one hectare (120 meters by 70 meters) and was very similar to some parts of the lunar surface. It was constructed using more than 3,000 cubic meters of soil, and included 54 craters up to 16 m in diameter and around about 160 rocks of various sizes. The whole area was surrounded with bricks, painted in gray and black. HP PB991A Battery
It was used to analyze problems with the Lunokhod chassis.[3]
At least four complete vehicles were constructed, with the serial numbers 201, 203, 204 and 205.
After the destruction of the original Lunokhod, Soviet engineers began work immediately on another lunar vehicle. HP PB992A Battery
Lunokhod 1(vehicle 8ЕЛ№203) was the first of two unmanned lunar rovers successfully landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of its Lunokhod program. The spacecraft which carried Lunokhod 1 was named Luna 17. Lunokhod was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world. HP PB994A Battery
Luna 17 was launched on November 10, 1970 at 14:44:01 UTC. After reaching Earth parking orbit, the final stage of Luna 17's launching rocket fired to place it into a trajectory towards the Moon (November 10, 1970 at 14:54 UTC). After two course correction manoeuvres (on November 12 and 14) it entered lunar orbit on November 15, 1970 at 22:00 UTC. HP PB995A Battery
The spacecraft soft-landed on the Moon in the Sea of Rains on November 17, 1970 at 03:47 UTC. The lander had dual ramps from which the payload, Lunokhod 1, could descend to the lunar surface. At 06:28 UT the rover moved onto the Moon's surface. HP PF723A Battery
To be able to work in vacuum a special fluoride based lubricant was used for the mechanical parts and the electric motors (one in each wheel hub) were enclosed in pressurised containers.[5][6]
The rover ran during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge its batteries via the solar panels. HP PM579A Battery
At night the rover hibernated until the next sunrise, heated by the radioisotope heater unit.
Rover description
Lunokhod 1 was a lunar vehicle formed of a tub-like compartment with a large convex lid on eight independently powered wheels. HP PP2210 Battery
Its length was 2.3 metres. Lunokhod 1 was equipped with a cone-shaped antenna, a highly directional helical antenna, four television cameras, and special extendable devices to impact the lunar soil for density measurements and mechanical property tests.
An X-ray spectrometer, an X-ray telescope, Cosmic Ray Detector, and a Laser device were also included. HP PP2182D Battery
The vehicle was powered by batteries which were recharged during the lunar day by a solar cell array mounted on the underside of the lid. During the lunar nights, the lid was closed and a polonium-210 heat source kept the internal components at operating temperature.
The rover stood 135 cm (4 ft 5 in) high and had a mass of 840 kg (1,850 lb). HP PP2182L Battery
It was about 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) long and 160 cm (4 ft 11 in) wide and had eight wheels each with an independent suspension, motor and brake. The rover had two speeds, ~1 km/h and ~2 km/h (0.6 mph and 1.2 mph).
Lunokhod 2 (vehicle 8ЕЛ№204) was the second and more advanced of two unmanned lunar rovers landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of the Lunokhod program. HP RW556AA Battery
The launcher put the spacecraft into Earth parking orbit on January 8, 1973, followed by translunar injection. On January 12, 1973, Luna 21 was braked into a 90 by 100 km (approx. 56 by 62 mile) lunar orbit.
The Luna 21 spacecraft landed on the Moon and deployed the second Soviet lunar rover, Lunokhod 2. HP ProBook 4510s Battery
The primary objectives of the mission were to collect images of the lunar surface, examine ambient light levels to determine the feasibility of astronomical observations from the Moon, perform laser ranging experiments from Earth, observe solar X-rays, measure local magnetic fields, and study mechanical properties of the lunar surface material. HP ProBook 4510s/CT Battery
The landing occurred on January 15, 1973 at 23:35 UT in Le Monnier crater at 25.85 degrees N, 30.45 degrees E.
After landing, the Lunokhod 2 took TV images of the surrounding area, then rolled down a ramp to the surface at 01:14 UT on 1973-01-16 and took pictures of the Luna 21 lander and landing site. HP ProBook 4515s Battery
Rover description
Lunokhod 2 was equipped with three slow-scan television cameras, one mounted high on the rover for navigation, which could return high resolution images at different rates—3.2, 5.7, 10.9 or 21.1 seconds per frame (not frames per second). HP ProBook 4515s/CT Battery
These images were used by a five-man team of controllers on Earth who sent driving commands to the rover in real time. There were 4 panoramic cameras mounted on the rover.
Power was supplied by a solar panel on the inside of a round hinged lid which covered the instrument bay, which would charge the batteries when opened. HP ProBook 4710s Battery
Apolonium-210 radioactive heat source was used to keep the rover warm during the long lunar nights.
Scientific instruments included a Soil Mechanics tester, Solar X-ray experiment, an Astrophotometer to measure visible and Ultraviolet light levels, HP ProBook 4710s/CT Battery
aMagnetometer deployed in front of the rover on the end of a 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) boom, a Radiometer, a Photodetector (Rubin-1) for laser detection experiments, and a French-supplied laser Corner Reflector.
During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod 1 traveled 10.5 km and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. HP ProBook 4410s Battery
In addition, it performed twenty-five soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations.
Lunokhod 2 operated for about 4 months, covered 37 km (23 miles) of terrain, including hilly upland areas and rilles, and currently holds the record for the longest distance of surface travel of any extraterrestrial vehicle.[4] HP ProBook 4411s Battery
It sent back 86 panoramic images and over 80,000 TV pictures. Many mechanical tests of the surface, laser ranging measurements, and other experiments were completed during this time.
For comparison, the similarly sized NASA Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity had, HP ProBook 4416s Battery
by their fifth anniversary in January 2009, traveled a total of 21 km (13 mi) and transmitted over 125,000 images.[8]
Chernobyl Legacy
According to a French documentary TV film "Tank on the Moon" by Jean Afanassieff, HP ProBook 4415s Battery
the Lunokhod design returned to limelight 15 years later due to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster on April 26, 1986.[9] The East German made remote controlledbulldozers available to Soviet civil defense troops weighed dozens of tons — too heavy to operate on the remaining parts of the partially collapsed reactor building roof. HP ProBook 4210s Battery
Human laborers could not be employed effectively to shovel debris, since work shifts were limited to 90 second intervals due to intense ionizing radiation.[10]
Lunokhod designers were called back from retirement, and in two weeks rovers were made which used nuclear decay heat sources for internal rack climate control, HP ProBook 4310s Battery
their electronic systems were already hardened to resist radiation.[11] This benefit allowed the 1986 designers to quickly devise a derived vehicle type for nuclear disaster recovery work. On July 15, two rovers, called STR-1,[4] were delivered to the Chernobyl accident zone and proved useful for clearing debris, earning awards for the designers. HP ProBook 4311s Battery
Due to extremely high radiation levels, all rovers eventually failed, and human workers (later named liquidators) were called in.[12]
Locations and ownership
Until 2010, the final location of Lunokhod 1 was uncertain by a few kilometers.[13] HP Pavilion dv2 Battery
Lunar laser ranging experiments had failed to detect a return signal from its retroreflector since the 1970s.[14] On March 17, 2010, Albert Abdrakhimov found both the lander and the rover[15] in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image M114185541RC.[16] On April 22, HP Pavilion dv2-1000 Battery
Tom Murphy (UCSD) and Russet McMillan at the Apache Point Observatory detected the robot's retroreflector using the Apache Point telescopic pulsed-laser rangefinder.[2]
Lunokhod 2 continues to be detected by lunar laser ranging experiments and its position is known to sub-meter accuracy. HP Pavilion dv2-1030 Battery
Ownership of Lunokhod 2 and the Luna 21 lander was sold by the Lavochkin Association for US$68,500 in December 1993 at aSotheby's auction in New York[17] (although the catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).[18] The buyer was computer gaming entrepreneur and astronaut's son Richard Garriott HP Pavilion dv2-1000eo Battery
(also known by his gaming character Lord British), who stated in a 2001 interview: "I purchased Lunakod 21 [sic] from the Russians. I am now the world's only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body. HP Pavilion dv2-1000ep Battery
Though there are international treaties that say no government shall lay claim to geography off planet earth, I am not a government. Summarily, I claim the moon in the name of Lord British!"[19] In 2007, Garriott said he is the owner of Lunokhod 2. HP Pavilion dv2-1001au Battery,HP Pavilion dv2-1001ax Battery,HP Pavilion dv2-1001eg Battery
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