les Archives - Galactic Journey

You don't want to miss today's Journey Show! In this first episode of the new season, we'll be talking about comics: Marvel, DC, British, European — and we'll also be discussing the new Batman show. Y'all come!

by Gideon Marcus

It seems like a mighty long time…

Looming huge on the horizon, shining brightly at zenith, one would imagine that visiting the Moon wouldn't be all that difficult. But making the 400,000+ kilometer trek has proved one of the hardest feats for humanity to tackle. Just reaching the vicinity of the Moon took four Pioneers and who knows how many secret Mechtas. And while the Soviets managed to hit the Moon in 1959 with Luna 2, the United States went through four Pioneer Ables and three Rangers before duplicating the feat in 1962. It wasn't until last year's Ranger 7 that we managed a fully successful TV crashlanding mission.

But despite early successes, the real heartbreak kings have been the Soviets. Since their spectacular Luna 3 mission in 1959, which was the first to return pictures from the Far Side, the Russians have failed in at least four attempts over the past year to soft-land on the Moon.

That all changed on February 3, 1966, when Luna 9 settled gently onto Oceanus Procellarum and returned the first pictures from the lunar surface.

Luna 9 was launched on January 31 amid the typical TASS fanfare. After the prior failures, it was hard to get too excited until the vehicle actually reached the Moon. Even then, we in the West had to find out about its success second-hand at first. The Russians are notoriously mum about their missions until it is certain that they worked (or that news of a failure can be properly massaged).

Luckily, the good folks at Britain's Jodrell Bank radio observatory were able to intercept Luna 9's transmissions, thus giving us a pretty good idea of its timeline. The U.S. Army also listened in on Luna 9's whole trip, though this fact wasn't broadcast initially.

Per TASS, we know that the spacecraft began its landing sequence about an hour before landing at 1:45 PM EST. Jodrell Bank confirms that Luna 9 broadcast a stream of pictures for the next 20 minutes followed by a second transmission at 9:00 PM.

And this is what Luna 9 saw:

In addition to the engineering triumph that the Luna 9 mission represents, it also yielded a bonanza of scientific information. For instance, we now know that the Moon is not covered by a dangerous quicksand of dust, which was a big concern for the Apollo people. Luna 9 has also returned valuable cosmic ray data.

Luna 9's chief success, however, has been nationalistic. After the two Voskhod flights, the Soviets watched helplessly as our Gemini program surpassed their accomplishments by leaps and bounds. For the moment, the Soviets are once again ahead in at least one aspect of the Space Race.

At least until Surveyor 1 lands in May…

I got my eyes on you

The Moon hasn't been the only Soviet target these past two months. Since December 10, they have launched six "Kosmos" class satellites, almost all of which likely been photographic surveillance craft like our Discoverer series (which we have continued to launch consistently every couple of weeks). We can tell this from the angle of their orbit, designed to maximize coverage of the West, and the fact that they land in Russia after about a week in space. Certainly, these "scientific" probes don't seem to return much data — I think Kosmos 41 was the last with any results published in any of the journals I follow, and it was launched in August 1964.

Stormy weather

The same day Luna 9 stunned the world with its pictures, the United States launched a quieter but no less momentous shutterbug of its own. ESSA 1, also known as TIROS 11, marked the beginning of a new era of weather forecasting. The prior TIROS satellites were all experimental, despite their unquestioned contribution to our daily forecasts. The new TIROS is not only better able to provide instant global weather pictures to any station in view at any time from its 700km altitude, it is the first to be managed by the new Environmental Science Services Administration.

From test product to fundamental government equipment in six years. Not bad!

The Sun is Shining

Completing the exploration of the Earth/Moon/Sun trinity is Pioneer 6, launched December 16, 1965. In the tradition of Pioneer 5, Pioneer 6 is a truly interplanetary probe. Its mission is not to encounter any other celestial bodies but to instead be a solar weather station in an orbit somewhere between that of Earth's and Venus'.

Its six instruments have been diligently recording long term data on radiation and magnetic conditions out in deep space, thus far reporting that the "solar wind" blows at about 1,000,000 km/h during quiet periods as opposed to three times as much in active times. The solar magnetic field appears comparatively unfluctuating, accompanied by a relatively low number of charged particles.

Pioneer 6 is the first of five such interplanetary probes planned for launch over the next few years.

1-2-3

Our last piece of news covers the multiple launch of December 21. The Air Force has been testing its mighty Titan IIIC, which remains the world's most powerful rocket until such time as the Saturn 1B takes off later this month. Since science abhors a vacuum, space aboard the mighty booster was used to launch four satellites into orbit at the same time.

These satellites were OV2-3, a radiation studies probe; LES-3 and 4, communications test satellites; and OSCAR 4, a relay broadcaster designed to be used by amateur "ham" radio enthusiasts. All of these satellites were supposed to be placed in 35,000 km high geosynchronous orbits, circling the Earth about once every day such that they appeared to remain roughly fixed in the sky. Unfortunately, while the Titan delivered the satellites into a geosynchronous transfer orbit, a final burn never happened. The four vehicles are thus trapped in a highly eccentric path that zooms up to 30,000 km while retaining an Earth-grazing 170km perigee.

Moreover, OV2-3 never switched on. LES-3 and 4 appear to work, however, doing top secret work offering data on communications in the UHF and SHF bands. OSCAR 4 has been less successful, only being used for 12 transmissions; one of them was the first ever satellite-relayed conversation between the United States and the USSR, however!

Man oh man

The space-related excitment won't stop anytime soon. On February 20, we'll see our first real Apollo mission when the new Saturn 1B launches a full Apollo CSM on a suborbital flight. And in March, we'll likely see our first docking in space when Gemini 8 goes up.

Science fiction made real, indeed!

by Gideon Marcus

It's been another exciting month in the realm of spaceflight. We're between crewed missions, what with Voskhod 2 and Gemini 3 having flown in March and the next Gemini due in a few days. Nevertheless, it has been a field day for robotic spacecraft, with a number of civilian and military packages booking passage aboard a plethora of satellites. Take a look:

The Shape of Things that Came

Yuri Gagarin soared into history in April 1961, becoming the first human space traveler. His face became known worldwide. His spacecraft, on the other hand, remained shrouded in mystery. For four years, the shape of the Vostok capsule remained a secret, with only a few dubious artists' conceptions offering any clues to its configuration.

That changed suddenly last month when the Soviets displayed the complete Vostok spacecraft at an exhibition in Moscow. Now we know that the fanciful cylinders and bullet-shaped craft were completely off the mark — Vostok was spherical.

This is significant. A sphere is a simple shape, mathematically, and it is not hard to weight a ball such that one end always points down. In the Vostok, that point is where its heat shield was mounted. A similar concept was employed with America's Mercury capsule, but the back end of the Mercury is only a small arc of a circle. That's because American rockets were too weak to loft a full sphere. Vostok is clearly a much heavier spacecraft than Mercury, and this suggests that the Soviet Vostok rocket was much more powerful than the Atlas and certainly the Redstone that lofted the first astronauts.

The unveiling of Vostok affords us a look into a completely different space program, too. Earlier in the year, American intelligence determined that the Vostok had been turned into a spy satellite. Instead of cosmonauts, the new Vostok carries a camera. After a week snapping pictures in orbit, the capsule parachutes to Earth, and the film is developed. It's an elegant repurposing, though it has to be more expensive than the American analog, Discoverer.

While the Soviets do not announce their spy missions, it's not too hard to figure out which of their Kosmos "science satellites" are probably spy Vostoks. Their orbits, sweeping them over Western targets of interest, and their short lifespans on the order of a week give them away. In just the last two months, it's likely that Kosmoses 64, 65, and 66 were all spy satellites. In a few days, we'll know if Kosmos 67, launched on May 25, is also a space shutterbug.

Softly, softly

Another probe about which the Soviets are being less than forthcoming is Luna 5. Launched on May 9, the ton-and-a-half spacecraft was headed for the Moon. Reportedly, it conducted a mid-course maneuver on May 10, directing it toward the Sea of Clouds — which it hit at 10:10 PM, Moscow time. Per TASS, "During the flight and the approach of the station to the moon a great deal of information was obtained which is necessary for the further elaboration of a system for soft landing on the moon’s surface."

That might lead one to the conclusion that Luna 5 was the Soviet version of Ranger, a TV probe designed to take pictures until it crashed. However, Western observers using telescopes saw the plume of dust that one would expect accompanying an attempt at a soft landing. That such a landing did not occur suggests that Luna 5 was supposed to be an equivalent of our Surveyor, set to launch next year, and that things did not go as planned. The lunar race thus remains neck and neck.

Exploring, Communicating

The last month saw two more entries into the Explorer series: Explorer 27, launched April 29, is a windmill-shaped little satellite that will measure irregularities in the Earth's shape; a secondary mission is probing the ionosphere.

Meanwhile, Explorer 28 was launched on May 28, and is the latest in the Interplanetary Monitoring Probe series, along with Explorers 18 and 21. All three craft have high, eccentric orbits that allow them to thoroughly map Earth's magnetic field, though Explorer 18 went kaput earlier this month.

As we saw with last month's flight of Intelsat 1, space-based communications are now a fact of everyday life. The USSR has now gotten in on the act, following up the flight of Early Bird with their own first satellite called Molniya, launched April 22, 1965. It has a high, 12-hour orbit, not quite geosynchronous, designed to service the high latitude residents of the Soviet Union during the daytime. European nations have already requested use of the Molniyas; they feel that the "international" Intelsat corporation too strongly favors the United States.

Finally, the Air Force's second "Lincoln Experimental Satellite," launched May 6, has been a success. This next-generation communications satellite tests new technologies that will allow it to service hundreds of users at a time. Its predecessor, LES-1 launched February 11, failed to fire its onboard engine that would kick it from its initial low orbit. LES-2 had no such problems, and its orbit takes it more than 9000 miles above the surface of the Earth.

Of course, being a military satellite (as opposed to Telstar, Relay, and Syncom), it is possible that we civilians won't see immediate benefits, but I suspect they will trickle down in good time.

Another step Moonward

May 25 marked the ninth successful launch of the Saturn rocket, possibly the biggest rocket on Earth. At its tip were boilerplates of the Apollo Command and Service Modules. But these mock spacecraft weren't the stars of the show: inside the cylindrical Service Module was a giant satellite, the second Pegasus. Appropriately adorned with a pair of enormous wings, Pegasus will stay in orbit for years measuring how many micrometeoroids our astronauts are likely to encounter on their way to the Moon.

The reliability of the Saturn is truly remarkable. Remember the early days of the Space Race? Chances were 50/50 then that any given rocket, Atlas, Juno, or Vanguard, would blow up on the launch pad, tilt off course, or otherwise fail. We're now in an age of maturing space travel. If Gemini's Titan rocket continues to do as well as the Saturn, I do believe that, by the 1970s, everyday citizens like you and me will be able to get tickets to ride into space.

This week's Journey Show is a special Space Race episode! Don't miss it!

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction

Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: les

[February 6, 1966] Hello, Stranger (exploring Space in Winter 65/66)

[May 30, 1965] Ticket to Ride (May space round-up)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction