Luna 1

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I am very interested in very early spacecraft history and I think that I will spend some time to read all kind of sources. This time I have chosen Luna 1 (alternate names: Lunik 1, Mechta). It was the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Earth's Moon. It was put for the first time to the heliocentric orbit as well.



Luna 1, part of the Soviet Luna programme, was launched in 1959 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. After the launch while it was travelling through the Van Allen radion belts it made already measurements, to indicate small amount of high energetic particles in the outer belt. Moon was found to have no detectable magnetic field. Luna 1 made the first ever direct observation of the solar wind.

Luna 1 was actually planned to impact the Moon but due to the programming error the burning stage was incorrect and it missed the Moon by 5900 km at the closest point. Spacecraft contained instruments for measurements: magnetometer, Geiger counter, scintillation counter, and micrometeorite detector and it achieved amazing results. To have an idea how big was such spacecraft the weight was about 400 kg.

The goal to reach, or rather to crash the Moon's surface was achieved by following spacecraft Luna 2 on September the same year (1959). I was looking into Luna programme chronology and I have found that the last Luna 24 was launched in August 1976. And it looks like the end of the very amazing and active period of space research. After that I found big gaps in both NASA and Russian/Soviet Lunar programmes which are filled time to time with other programmes from China, Korea and India. Correct me if I am wrong.

I think that I will stay on the history wave for a while. I am fully admiring the work what has been made and I would like to remind the people about what was achieved in our recent past.

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