Lunik mission
The Soviet Luna lunar probes of the first series are referred to as Lunik in Western sources , based on the name of the first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik . Three of the nine probes reached the moon , the others failed.
In the official Soviet media, the three successful probes, called Lunik 1 to Lunik 3 in the West , have the (translated) names given below.
- Lunik 1958A - Destroyed by rocket explosion on September 23, 1958
- Lunik 1958B - Destroyed by rocket explosion on October 12, 1958
- Lunik 1958C - Destroyed by rocket explosion on December 4th, 1958
- Lunik 1 ("Cosmic Rocket") - swungincorrectly into a solar orbitin January 1959 after a flyby of the moon; nevertheless it provided useful radiation measurements for the analysis of the terrestrial radiation belt and confirmed the existence of the solar wind .
- Lunik 1959A - Destroyed by rocket explosion on June 18, 1959
- Lunik 2 ("Soviet Cosmic Rocket 2") - was the first artificial missile that hit the moon's surface on September 13, 1959.
- Lunik 3 ("Automatic Interplanetary Station") - photographed the back of the moon for the first time in October 1959.
- Lunik 1960A - on April 15, 1960, did not reach the necessary escape speed to leave the earth, fell back and burned up in the earth's atmosphere
- Lunik 1960B - destroyed by rocket explosion on April 19, 1960
All the names of the failed probes are fictitious catalog names, because the USSR never admitted these failures. For Lunik 1958–59, impacts on the lunar surface were planned as with Lunik 2, for the two Lunik missions in 1960 the orbit as with Lunik 3.
The following lunar probes of the second series were called Luna (Russian: moon).