Lunik 3

Luna 3
NSSDC ID	1959-008A
Mission goal	Earth moon
Client	Soviet Union
Launcher	Vostok (8K72)
construction
Takeoff mass	278.5 kg
Instruments
camera
Course of the mission
Start date	4th October 1959
launch pad	Baikonur Cosmodrome
End date	October 22, 1959
October 4, 1959 begin October 7, 1959 First photo from the back of the moon October 22, 1959 Mission end Apr. 1960 Burning up in the earth's atmosphere

Luna 3 ( Russian Луна-3 , Luna-3 ), also referred to as Lunik 3 in the western media , was the third successful lunar probe of the Soviet Union . The spacecraft was launched on October 4, 1959 and weighed 278.5 kilograms.

Mission history

First photo of the far side of the moon by Lunik 3 from October 7, 1959

In contrast to Lunik 1, Lunik 3 had a camera with which it took spectacular photos of the far side of the moon . The image quality of the photos was not particularly good and there were significant problems with the signal transmission. The images were developed photographically on board and transmitted using old radio image technology. A total of 29 photos were taken from the back of the moon, showing 70 percent of the side facing away from the earth. However, not all photos were successfully transferred to Earth . The main discovery was that on the remote side, the bright highlands with many craters characterize the surface, while the large Maria is missing. The most striking mare plains found by Lunik 3 are the Moscow Sea and the particularly dark bottom of Tsiolkovsky crater .

After traveling around the moon, the probe returned to the earth's gravitational field and burned up in the earth's atmosphere in April 1960. Radio contact was broken on October 22, 1959.

With Lunik 3, the Soviet Union once again impressively demonstrated its ambitions for the space race .

Film technology

According to later statements by Peter Bratslawets, the developer of the Lunik camera, the photographic film used is said to have come from US Genetrix balloons that were shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft guns and then recovered. The balloons flew over the Soviet Union to take reconnaissance photos in the mid-1950s. When the US film was examined, it turned out that it met the high requirements for the lunar probe, while the films made in the Soviet Union at the time were not suitable for it.

See also

• Unmanned space travel records
• Space exploration timeline
• Successor missions Luna Luna 4 to 24 as part of the Russian Luna program s

literature

• About the launch of the third Soviet cosmic missile . In: The Soviet Union Today . No. 29 (4th year), October 10, 1959, pp. 5-7 (Online: http://epizodsspace.no-ip.org/bibl/inostr-yazyki/nemets/die-sowjetunion-heute/1959 /start-no_29.pdf (Wikipedia spam filter blocked because of no-ip ))

Web links

Commons : Lunik 3  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Robert Christy: The Mission of Luna 3 in Zarya.info (English)
• Lunik 3 in the NSSDCA Master Catalog (English)
• Sven Grahn - Flight of Luna 3 (English)

swell

1. ^ Sven Grahn: The flight of Luna 3. In: svengrahn.pp.se. Accessed August 6, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Igor Borisovich Lisoschkin: SpyBalloon. In: St. Petersburg Vedomosti / svengrahn.pp.se. April 10, 1993, accessed August 6, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Paolo Ulivi: Lunar Exploration: Human Pioneers and Robotic Surveyors . Springer-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-1-85233-746-9 , pp. 26 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
4. ↑ Wesley T. Huntress JR., Mikhail Ya Marov: Soviet Robots in the Solar System: Mission Technologies and Discoveries . Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4419-7897-4 , pp. 83 ( limited preview in Google Book search).