50 Years Ago: Luna 9 on the Moon

Soviet Luna IX Lunar Probe.

This February marks the 50th anniversary of a great achievement for Soviet Russia's moon program. Back on February 3, 1966, the Russians successfully directed the Luna IX Moon Probe towards the lunar surface. The Molniya-M rocket carrying the probe left Earth on January 31. Using nitrogen-powered thrusters, the spacecraft commenced spinning for thermal control, and the fourth stage propelled the craft into a lunar interception orbit.

Lander segment process art.

At 16 miles from the surface, the craft began retro-rocket firings to slow its descent. When the probe reached 16 feet above the surface the lander capsule was ejected, and when on the surface it deployed its landing petals for orientation and began taking pictures.

One of the first images from the surface of the Moon.

The lander began sending the images back to Earth about 7 hours later. Interestingly, the Soviets delayed releasing the images, but meanwhile in England, scientists at the Jodrell Observatory where able to print the images and get them to the papers. There is some speculation that the inclusion of standard press-type Radiofax imagers on the probe may have been intended to help the Observatory prepare the images for release anyway.

50 Years Ago: Soviet Luna 5 crashes into the Moon

Soviet Union's Luna 5 Moon probe.

Back in May 1965, the Russians were also trying their hand at lunar reconnaissance before sending humans to the Moon. The Luna program was a huge program of launches to send robotic explorers to the Moons orbit or to land on the surface. More than 24 missions were successful. Failures were kept in secrecy or relabeled. Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the surface of the Moon when it impacted on the surface in September 1959. Luna 3 sent the first pictures to Earth of the Moon's far side. Luna 5 was supposed to be the first probe to safely land on the surface.

Soviet illustration of how the lander would have been deployed. This did not succeed until Luna 9.

On May 12, 1965 the Soviet propaganda arm declared to the world that Luna 5 had successfully impacted the lunar surface in the area of the Sea of Clouds and that many important pictures had been taken. Western space experts correctly guessed that the mission had failed, and that the Soviets had been attempting to make a soft landing.  On May 13, The Soviet leadership must have decided that honesty was a preferred course to take. They announced that the mission failure may have occurred because of the late firing of landing thrusters, pointing out that the 2.5 second radio delay in that distance would have prevented ground controllers from taking corrective action.

Today we know that the craft had suffered from uncontrolled spinning after a mid-course correction on the way to the Moon. The main landing engine failed to fire because of a ground-control error.