I was watching a interesting program on the Space Race, and it mentioned two occasions that i would love to learn more about
About the same time as the U.S. launched Apollo 8, Russia was preparing to launch their own ship to circle the moon. However we can thank their stupidness for not doing so and probably landing on the moon first.
Russian rockets have to be fueled soon before launch and security around them are said not to be as high as we do.
I dont remember the date, but there was escaping gas out of the fuel area and two technicians decided to have a smoke.... right next to the fuel pumps.... KAAAABOOOOM
Apollo 11
In a shot of the moon and the earth behind it, as Niel and company are walking around, a probe can be seen flying over head.. this was said to be a Russian probe looking for the place to land their own ship.
Anyone ever heard of these? know any others?
2007-03-09 10:43:08 · 5 answers · asked by clomtancy 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
the russian space program at that time was really interesting
in fact there were a few missions on the way during the apollo missions of NASA
the russians flew at least 42 more or less successful missions i found here and there on the net
among them is the first soft landing of a probe on the lunar surface, two succesful Rover missions and a few sample-return missions.
around the time Apollo 11 landed there were at least 5 test missions for the russian command module. These missions were named Zond 4 to Zond 8
here's a more or less complete list of events:
23.09.1958 Luna 1A Rocket broke apart 93 seconds after takeoff, cause of unexpected vibrations
11.10.1958 Luna 1B Rocket broke apart after 104 seconds, cause of vibrations
04.12.1958 Luna 1C Did not make it into an orbit, loss of turbopump, engine switched off after 245 seconds
02.01.1959 Luna 1 left earth orbit but was unable to reach the moon, due to a mistake in ist trajectory, probe remained active till it was 600000 km away, and the batteries were depleted - measuring solar wind
18.06.1959 Luna 2A loss of a control-system, controlled destruction after 153 seconds
12.09.1959 Luna 2 intentionelly flown into the moon, measuring solar wind
04.10.1959 Luna 3 succesfully photographed the farside of the moon and returned a film capsule
04.01.1960 Sputnik 25 this was some LUNA thingy dunno which
15.04.1960 Luna 3A engine failure in 3rd stage, probe reached 200000 km distance and crashed on earth
16.04.1960 Luna 3B engine failure just 0.4 seconds after ignition, destroying the rocket
02.04.1963 Luna 4 first time leaving the earth orbit, missed moon by 8000 km
09.05.1965 Luna 5 crashed on moon, loss of main engine due to uncontrolled rotation of the probe
06.06.1965 Luna 6 missed the moon by 160000 km, cause of doing an improper engine burn in the wrong direction
04.10.1965 Luna 7 crashed on moon, loosing its attitude control, failed to fire breaking rockets
03.12.1965 Luna 8 crashed on moon, after firing the breaking rockets for 9 seconds. Probe went into uncontrolled spin
31.01.1966 Luna 9 first soft landing on Feb 3 1966 at 'Oceanus Procellarum' , Probe sending pictures and data for 3 days, till batteries were depleted
03.04.1966 Luna 10 orbiter only, first succesfull moon orbit insertion, measuring magnetic field
24.08.1966 Luna 11 orbiter only, attempting to make photos, but cam failed
22.10.1966 Luna 12 orbiter only, same as Luna 11, this time the cam worked
24.12.1966 Luna 13 succesful landing
02.03.1968 Zond 4 unmanned test vessel for the manned soviet moon-program, lost control, destroyed near the gulf of Guinea
07.04.1968 Luna 14 orbiter only, test of manned soviet moon-programs communication technology
15.09.1968 Zond 5 unmanned test vessel for the soviet manned moon-program, lost control, but returned in a ballistic curve into the indian ocean where it was recovered this led NASA to launch Apollo 8 earlier than planned
10.11.1968 Zond 6 unmanned test vessel for the soviet manned moon-program, succesful flying around the moon, but failed trying to re-entry earth, loss of cabin pressure, heating problems, parachutes came too early and were thrown off, the braking chute did not deploy.. finally the capsule crashed, and it was declared unsurvivable
19.02.1969 Luna 17A a newly designed payload fairing collapsed 51 seconds into the flight, this was the first attempt to get a Rover onto the moon, it used a pollonioum source as heat source for the rover which wasn't recovered even after an intense search operation. Rumours say soldiers used the device for heating their baracks
14.06.1969 Luna 15A Proton 4th stage failed to ignit, payload lost over pacific ocean
13.07.1969 Luna 15 sample return mission, crashed on moon for unknown cause
07.08.1969 Zond 7 unmanned test vessel for the soviet manned moon-program, succesful flying a turtle around the moon in a seven-day mission. Re-entry was successful, but at this time apollo 11 already took part
13.09.1969 Kosmos 300 reached earth orbit, but lost all ist oxygene of ist 4th stage due to a malfunction of a valve, re-ignition of 4th stage failed. so it was named Kosmos-something, as usual
22.10.1969 Kosmos 305 probably lost cause of a programming error, lost contact in earth orbit
06.02.1970 Luna 16A too early 2nd stage shutdown, due to a malicious signal 127 seconds after takeoff, intentionally destroyed
02.09.1970 Luna 18 sample return mission, possibly tilted over after soft landing, lost contact
12.09.1970 Luna 16 sample return mission, succesful
20.10.1970 Zond 8 unmanned test vessel for the soviet manned moon-program, succesful test of an alternate return trajectory over the north-pole
17.11.1970 Luna 17 First Moonrover mission, Lunchod 1 (32 days, 10.5 km) made about 20.000 pictures, 206 panoramic pictures, penetrated the soil at 500 spots
28.09.1971 Luna 19 Orbiter only, interestingly with a Lunochod Rover without wheels but extended instrument-suite
14.02.1972 Luna 20 sample return mission, brought back 55g of samples, cause of unadequate drilling equipment
29.05.1974 Luna 22 orbiter only, interestingly it carried a Lunochod rover without wheels but additional instrument suites
28.10.1974 Luna 23 sample return mission, soft landing but the sample collector was damaged on landing
16.10.1975 Luna 24A 4th stage of Proton did not fire
09.08.1976 Luna 24 sample return mission, succesful return of 170g lunar material
15.01.1977 Luna 21 Second Moonrover Mission Lunochod 2 (travelled 37km) and finally fell into a crater which poured dust on ist solar-panels, this killed the batteries
2007-03-09 13:39:23 · answer #1 · answered by blondnirvana 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well there were several pictures showing EARTH RISE and the other craft that is Sean that the LIM had to get back to ,to return to earth . It was not the Russians. About the Russians their technology is not that top notch. I sat the tracking console in Goddard on Apollo Soyies. They were having trouble that every time they acquire the Russians they would get this noise that bombed out all telemetry . So when we acquired the Russians again the noise was there but for me it sound like the volume was turned too high. Told the network director that they had a speaker and would forget to turn off the speaker. So I passed it on to the Russian interface and some pore Russian had to listen with an ear plug for the rest of the mission. U may be able to get that picture from NASA.
2007-03-09 19:11:05 · answer #2 · answered by JOHNNIE B 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Russians have lost more techs to exploding boosters than we have; Their moonship - the N1, I believe - used 30 rocket engines on it's first stage, where the Saturn 5 only used 5 - it was a difficult task to actually fly the rocket, and none were ever launched successfully.
Their setback was our good fortune, and we succeeded the first time.
I've seen the video of the craft flying over the Apollo XI astronauts' head; it crashed about 200 miles east of the Astronaut's landing site, I believe.
2007-03-09 18:58:01 · answer #3 · answered by quantumclaustrophobe 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Soviet N1 rocket did blow up around that time, but I never heard it was from someone smoking!
There are no pictures from the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 11 flight that show the Earth in the sky because at that location it would have been almost directly overhead. And I have never heard of any picture from the surface that showed anything in orbit either.
2007-03-09 18:48:58 · answer #4 · answered by campbelp2002 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No Soviet spacecraft were at the moon when Apollo 11 was in flight. And even if there were some secreative ones, it's extremely unlikely that the Russian spacecraft and Apollo 11 would ever get close enough to see the other.
2007-03-09 19:42:43 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋