1.
Ranger School
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The United States Army Ranger School is an intense 61-day combat leadership course oriented toward small-unit tactics. It has been called the most physically and mentally demanding leadership school the Army has to offer and it is open to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in the US Armed Forces, as well as allied military students. Ranger training began in 1950 and has undergone changes to its training regimen. A Desert Phase was employed for about a decade between the 1980s and 1990s and its removal left the three phases used in the 21st century, Darby, Mountains, and Florida. The course is conducted in various locations, Training in the Benning Phase occurs in and around Camp Rogers and Camp Darby at Fort Benning, Georgia. Training at the Mountain Phase is conducted at Camp Merrill, in the mountains near Dahlonega. The Florida Phase is conducted at locations near Camp Rudder, Eglin Air Force Base. The Desert Phase—conducted initially at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the United States Army Ranger School is not organizationally affiliated with the 75th Ranger Regiment. The two share a heritage and subordinate battalions common lineage, and Ranger School is a requirement for all officers. The cloth version of the tab is worn on the Army Combat Uniform and Class-A dress uniform of the U. S. Army, Ranger Training began in September 1950 at Fort Benning Georgia with the formation and training of 17 Airborne Companies by the Ranger Training Command. The first class graduated from Ranger training in November 1950, becoming the 1st Ranger Infantry Company, the United States Armys Infantry School officially established the Ranger Department in December 1951. Under the Ranger Department, the first Ranger School Class was conducted in January–March 1952, at the time, Ranger training was voluntary. In 1966, a panel headed by General Ralph E. Haines Jr. recommended making Ranger training mandatory for all Regular Army officers upon commissioning, on 16 August 1966, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Harold K. Johnson, directed it so. This policy was implemented in July 1967 and it was rescinded on 21 June 1972 by General William Westmoreland. Once again, Ranger training was voluntary, in August 1987, the Ranger Department was split from the Infantry School and the Ranger Training Brigade was established. The Ranger Companies that made up the Ranger Department became the current training units—the 4th, 5th and 6th Ranger Training Battalions, in 1983, the Desert Phase was added and the length of the Ranger course was extended to 65 days. The duration was expanded in October 1991 to 68 days. The 7th Ranger Training Battalion was added to administer this phase, the most recent duration change to Ranger School occurred in May 1995, when the Desert Phase was removed from the Ranger course
2.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in La Cañada Flintridge, California and Pasadena, California, United States. The JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology for NASA, the laboratorys primary function is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASAs Deep Space Network and they are also responsible for managing the JPL Small-Body Database, and provides physical data and lists of publications for all known small Solar System bodies. The JPLs Space Flight Operations Facility and Twenty-Five-Foot Space Simulator are designated National Historic Landmarks, JPL traces its beginnings to 1936 in the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology when the first set of rocket experiments were carried out in the Arroyo Seco. Malinas thesis advisor was engineer/aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán, who arranged for U. S. Army financial support for this GALCIT Rocket Project in 1939. In 1941, Malina, Parsons, Forman, Martin Summerfield, in 1943, von Kármán, Malina, Parsons, and Forman established the Aerojet Corporation to manufacture JATO motors. The project took on the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 1943, during JPLs Army years, the laboratory developed two deployed weapon systems, the MGM-5 Corporal and MGM-29 Sergeant intermediate range ballistic missiles. These missiles were the first US ballistic missiles developed at JPL and it also developed a number of other weapons system prototypes, such as the Loki anti-aircraft missile system, and the forerunner of the Aerobee sounding rocket. At various times, it carried out testing at the White Sands Proving Ground, Edwards Air Force Base. A lunar lander was developed in 1938-39 which influenced design of the Apollo Lunar Module in the 1960s. The team lost that proposal to Project Vanguard, and instead embarked on a project to demonstrate ablative re-entry technology using a Jupiter-C rocket. They carried out three successful flights in 1956 and 1957. Using a spare Juno I, the two organizations then launched the United States first satellite, Explorer 1, on February 1,1958, JPL was transferred to NASA in December 1958, becoming the agencys primary planetary spacecraft center. JPL engineers designed and operated Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon that prepared the way for Apollo, JPL also led the way in interplanetary exploration with the Mariner missions to Venus, Mars, and Mercury. In 1998, JPL opened the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA, as of 2013, it has found 95% of asteroids that are a kilometer or more in diameter that cross Earths orbit. JPL was early to employ women mathematicians, in the 1940s and 1950s, using mechanical calculators, women in an all-female computations group performed trajectory calculations. In 1961, JPL hired Dana Ulery as their first woman engineer to work alongside male engineers as part of the Ranger and Mariner mission tracking teams, when founded, JPLs site was a rocky flood-plain just outside the city limits of Pasadena. Almost all of the 177 acres of the U. S, the city of La Cañada Flintridge, California was incorporated in 1976, well after JPL attained international recognition with a Pasadena address
3.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
4.
Satellite bus
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A satellite bus or spacecraft bus is the general model on which multiple-production satellite spacecraft are often based. The bus is the infrastructure of a spacecraft, usually providing locations for the payload, a bus-derived satellite would be used as opposed to a one-off, or specially produced satellite, such as Prospero X-3. Bus-derived satellites are usually customized to customer requirements, for example with specialized sensors or transponders, comparison of satellite buses Service module Satellite Glossary JWST Observatory, The Spacecraft Bus Spitzers Spacecraft Bus Gunters Space Page, Spacecraft buses
5.
Mariner program
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The program included a number of firsts, including the first planetary flyby, the first planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver. Of the ten vehicles in the Mariner series, seven were successful, other Mariner-based spacecraft, launched since Voyager, included the Magellan probe to Venus, and the Galileo probe to Jupiter. A second-generation Mariner spacecraft, called the Mariner Mark II series, eventually evolved into the Cassini–Huygens probe, the total cost of the Mariner program was approximately $554 million. Mariner 2 was based on the Ranger Lunar probe, all of the Mariners launched after Mariner 2 had four solar panels for power, except for Mariner 10, which had two. Additionally, all except Mariner 1, Mariner 2 and Mariner 5 had TV cameras, the first five Mariners were launched on Atlas-Agena rockets, while the last five used the Atlas-Centaur. All Mariner-based probes after Mariner 10 used the Titan IIIE, Titan IV unmanned rockets or the Space Shuttle with a solid-fueled Inertial Upper Stage and multiple planetary flybys. Mariners, Mariner 1 Mariner 2 Mariner 3 Mariner 4 Mariner 5 Mariner 6 Mariner 7 Mariner 8 Mariner 9 Mariner 10 Mariner 1, a secondary objective was to make interplanetary magnetic field and/or particle measurements on the way to, and in the vicinity of, Venus. Mariner 1 was launched on July 22,1962, but was destroyed approximately 5 minutes after liftoff by the Air Force Range Safety Officer when its malfunctioning Atlas-Agena rocket went off course. Mariner 2 was launched on August 27,1962, sending it on a 3½-month flight to Venus, the mission was a success, and Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to have flown by another planet. Mariner 2 – Defunct after successful mission, occupies a heliocentric orbit, sisterships Mariner 3 and Mariner 4 were Mars flyby missions. Mariner 3 was lost when the vehicles nose fairing failed to jettison. Mariner 4, launched on November 28,1964, was the first successful flyby of the planet Mars, Mariner 4 – Communications lost after bombardment by micrometeoroids. The Mariner 5 spacecraft was launched to Venus on June 14,1967, Mariners 6 and 7 were identical teammates in a two-spacecraft mission to Mars. Mariner 6 was launched on February 24,1969, followed by Mariner 7 on March 21,1969 and they flew over the equator and southern hemisphere of the planet Mars. Mariner 8 and Mariner 9 were identical sister craft designed to map the Martian surface simultaneously and its identical sister craft, Mariner 9, was launched in May 1971 and became the first artificial satellite of Mars. It entered Martian orbit in November 1971 and began photographing the surface and analyzing the atmosphere with its infrared, in Areocentric orbit until at least 2022 when it is projected to fall out of orbit and into the Martian atmosphere. It was also the first spacecraft to encounter two planets at close range, and for 33 years the spacecraft to photograph Mercury in closeup. Mission, plasma, charged particles, magnetic fields, radio occultation and celestial mechanics Status, Mariner Jupiter-Saturn was approved in 1972 after the cancellation of the Grand Tour program, which proposed visiting all the outer planets with multiple spacecraft
6.
Robotic spacecraft
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A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft, usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost, in addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, many artificial satellites are robotic spacecraft, as are many landers and rovers. The first robotic spacecraft was launched by the Soviet Union on 22 July 1951, four other such flights were made through the fall of 1951. The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was put into a 215-by-939-kilometer Earth orbit by the USSR) on 4 October 1957, on 3 November 1957, the USSR orbited Sputnik 2. Weighing 113 kilograms, Sputnik 2 carried the first living animal into orbit, since the satellite was not designed to detach from its launch vehicles upper stage, the total mass in orbit was 508.3 kilograms. In a close race with the Soviets, the United States launched its first artificial satellite, Explorer 1, into a 193-by-1, 373-nautical-mile orbit on 31 January 1958. Explorer I was a 80. 75-inch long by 6. 00-inch diameter cyllynder weighing 30.8 pounds, compared to Sputnik 1, a 58-centimeter sphere which weighed 83.6 kilograms. Explorer 1 carried sensors which confirmed the existence of the Van Allen belts, on 17 March 1958, the US orbited its second satellite, Vanguard 1, which was about the size of a grapefruit, and remains in a 360-by-2, 080-nautical-mile orbit as of 2016. Nine other countries have successfully launched satellites using their own vehicles, France, Australia, Japan and China, the United Kingdom, India, Israel, Iran. In spacecraft design, the United States Air Force considers a vehicle to consist of the mission payload, the bus provides physical structure, thermal control, electrical power, attitude control and telemetry, tracking and commanding. JPL divides the system of a spacecraft into subsystems. These include, This is the backbone structure. It, provides overall mechanical integrity of the spacecraft ensures spacecraft components are supported and can withstand launch loads This is sometimes referred to as the command, components in the telecommunications subsystem include radio antennas, transmitters and receivers. These may be used to communicate with stations on Earth. The supply of power on spacecraft generally come from photovoltaic cells or from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Other components of the subsystem include batteries for storing power and distribution circuitry that connects components to the power sources, spacecraft are often protected from temperature fluctuations with insulation
7.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
Geology of the Moon
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The geology of the Moon is quite different from that of Earth. The complex geomorphology of the surface has been formed by a combination of processes, especially impact cratering. The Moon is a body, with a crust, mantle. Geological studies of the Moon are based on a combination of Earth-based telescope observations, measurements from orbiting spacecraft, lunar samples, and geophysical data. Six locations were sampled directly during the manned Apollo program landings from 1969 to 1972, in addition, three robotic Soviet Luna spacecraft returned another 326 grams from 1970 to 1976. The Moon is the only body for which we have samples with a known geologic context. A handful of lunar meteorites have been recognized on Earth, though their source craters on the Moon are unknown, a substantial portion of the lunar surface has not been explored, and a number of geological questions remain unanswered. Elements known to be present on the surface include, among others, oxygen, silicon, iron, magnesium, calcium, aluminium, manganese. Among the more abundant are oxygen, iron and silicon, the oxygen content is estimated at 45%. Carbon and nitrogen appear to be present only in quantities from deposition by solar wind. Neutron spectrometry data from Lunar Prospector indicate the presence of hydrogen concentrated at the poles, for a long period of time, the fundamental question regarding the history of the Moon was of its origin. Early hypotheses included fission from Earth, capture, and co-accretion, today, the giant impact hypothesis is widely accepted by the scientific community. The geological history of the Moon has been defined into six major epochs, starting about 4.5 billion years ago, the newly formed Moon was in a molten state and was orbiting much closer to Earth resulting in tidal forces. These tidal forces deformed the molten body into an ellipsoid, with the major axis pointed towards Earth, the first important event in the geologic evolution of the Moon was the crystallization of the near global magma ocean. It is not known with certainty what its depth was, the first minerals to form in this ocean were the iron and magnesium silicates olivine and pyroxene. Because these minerals were denser than the material around them. After crystallization was about 75% complete, less dense anorthositic plagioclase feldspar crystallized and floated, forming an anorthositic crust about 50 km in thickness. The oldest of the Mg-suite rocks have ages of about 3.85 Ga. However
9.
Ranger 7
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Ranger 7 was the first American space probe to successfully transmit close images of the lunar surface back to Earth. It was also the first completely successful flight of the Ranger program, launched on July 28,1964, Ranger 7 was designed to achieve a lunar-impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras - two wide-angle and four narrow-angle - to accomplish these objectives, Ranger 7 transmitted over 4,300 photographs during the final 17 minutes of its flight. After 68.6 hours of flight, the spacecraft landed between Mare Nubium and Oceanus Procellarum and this landing site was later named Mare Cognitum. The velocity at impact was 1.62 miles per second, no other experiments were carried on the spacecraft. He considered Ranger a loser and for a while, anyone at NASA involved in the Ranger program tried to conceal it and it was also being said that sending probes up for the sole purpose of returning images was pointless and accomplished nothing that Apollo could not also achieve. Shortly after Ranger 6s mission concluded, a board was convened to resolve the cause of the TV camera failure. This was determined quickly, the inadvertent activation of the telemetry system during ascent had been caused by an electrical short that crippled the power supply for the cameras. But why it had happened was as yet a mystery, especially as telemetry data sent back from the probe could only provide an amount of information. On February 14,1964, JPL released a report noting that an internal command switch could have activated prematurely or that arcing had occurred in the connector on the payload fairing. However, there was no evidence of the latter happening or any way that it could occur. If the cameras had to be redesigned from scratch, the next Ranger mission could be delayed almost a full year. Although there was suspicion that this had been done by a disgruntled employee, since no obvious reason for the malfunction could be found in the cameras themselves, investigation next shifted to the electrical umbilical on the payload fairing. This umbilical connector would normally be attached on the ground to permit testing of the Rangers subsystems, one of the pins on the connector was hot and could easily be bridged, transferring a voltage to the adjacent pins and activating the TV camera system during launch. As for the cause of it, one possibility was electrostatic discharge, alexander Bratenahl, a physicist at JPLs Space Sciences Division, suggested that the electrical short was caused by venting propellant during Atlas booster section jettison. The idea of a discharge was also unlikely given the thinning air. Bratenahl persisted and studied film of Atlas launches with the frames enlarged. Another phone call to Convair revealed that 67 pounds of RP-1 were also dumped during staging, the inadvertent activation of the telemetry system during launch had occurred almost simultaneous with booster jettison at T+140 seconds
10.
Ranger 1
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Ranger 1 was a prototype spacecraft launched as part of the Ranger program of unmanned space missions. Due to a launch vehicle malfunction, the spacecraft could only reach Low Earth orbit, rather than the high Earth orbit that had been planned, and was only able to complete part of its mission. The spacecraft was of the Ranger Block I design and consisted of a hexagonal base 1. 5-meter across upon which was mounted a cone-shaped 4-meter-high tower of aluminum struts, two solar panel wings measuring 5.2 metres from tip to tip extended from the base. A high-gain directional dish antenna was attached to the bottom of the base, spacecraft experiments and other equipment were mounted on the base and tower. There was no camera or midcourse correction engine on the Block I spacecraft, Power was to be furnished by 8680 solar cells on the two panels, a 57-kilogram silver-zinc battery, and smaller batteries on some of the experiments. Attitude control was provided by a timing controller, Sun and Earth sensors. The temperature was controlled passively by gold plating, white paint, the Ranger 1 spacecraft was designed to go into an Earth parking orbit and then move into a 60, 000-by-1,100, 000-kilometre Earth orbit. The purpose of the mission was mainly as an engineering test to verify the functionality of the Ranger hardware, delay of the 1st countdown July 26, Trajectory information required by the Range Safety Officer was delayed. July 27, A guidance system malfunction in the Atlas booster, July 28, Engineers found that the guidance program to be fed into the Cape computer contained an error. 83 minutes before launch, Power interruptions occurred, requiring momentary holds to permit all stations to check,28 minutes before launch, Commercial electrical power failed. Inadequate allowance had been made for changes in cable sag caused by variations in temperature on the new power poles recently installed at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Engineers discovered a leak in Rangers attitude control gas system. A valve malfunctioned in the tank on the Atlas booster. Ground controllers turned on a spacecraft command applying high voltage to the experiments for calibration purposes. Immediately all stations reported a major spacecraft failure, an electrical malfunction had triggered multiple commands from the central clock timer, and Ranger 1 turned on as it had been programmed to do in orbit. The explosive squibs fired, solar panels extended inside the shroud, Project engineers disengaged Ranger 1 from the Agena and hastily returned it to Hangar AE. Meantime, the launch was rescheduled for August 22, the next available opportunity, in the days that followed, they replaced and requalified the damaged parts and modified the circuitry to prevent a recurrence of this kind of failure. During the first half of 1961, Lockheed introduced the new Agena B stage which replaced the early test-model Agena A of 1959-60, Agena B was more powerful and had in-orbit restart capability. Its first flight with the launch of Midas 3 on July 24 was successful, after removing Ranger 1 and repairing it, the launch was carried out at 6,04 AM EST on August 23
11.
Ranger 2
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Ranger 2 was a flight test of the Ranger spacecraft system of the NASA Ranger program designed for future lunar and interplanetary missions. Ranger 2 was of the Ranger Block 1 design and was almost identical to Ranger 1, the spacecraft consisted of a hexagonal base 1.5 m across, upon which was mounted a cone-shaped 4-meter-high tower of aluminum struts and braces. Two solar panel wings measuring 5.2 m from tip to tip extended from the base, a high-gain directional dish antenna was attached to the bottom of the base. Spacecraft experiments and other equipment were mounted on the base and tower, power was to be furnished by 8680 solar cells on the two panels, a 53.5 kg silver-zinc battery, and smaller batteries on some of the experiments. Attitude control was provided by a solid state timing controller, Sun and Earth sensors, gyroscopes, the temperature was controlled passively by gold plating, white paint, and polished aluminum surfaces. Shortly after Ranger 1s unsuccessful mission, Atlas 117D and Agena 6002 were rolled out to LC-12 for the next attempt, once again, getting the booster and spacecraft ready for flight proved a frustrating experience. The stage was found to have the problem as Discoverer 33s Agena. It took until mid-November before everything was finally ready, liftoff took place at 3,12 AM EST on November 18 and once again all went well up until the planned Agena restart, which ended for the second time in a row with a burn lasting a few seconds. This time, the problem was traced to a rate gyro in the Agena which had gone undetected at launch. Unlike with Ranger 1, the Agena had not operated long enough to any significant ISP. Tracking antennas could not lock onto the probe or send it any commands, telemetry and instrument data were still received for a few hours, but eventually the orbit decayed too low and after only one day and 19 orbits, Ranger 2 reentered the atmosphere and burned up. Ranger program Timeline of Solar System exploration List of artificial objects on the Moon National Space Science Data Center - Ranger 2, Space Flight Operations Memorandum - Ranger 2 Lunar impact, A history of Project Ranger 1977
12.
Atlas-Agena
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The Atlas-Agena was an American expendable launch system derived from the SM-65 Atlas missile. It was a member of the Atlas family of rockets, and was launched 109 times between 1960 and 1978 and it was used to launch the first five Mariner unmanned probes to the planets Venus and Mars, and the Ranger and Lunar Orbiter unmanned probes to the Moon. The upper stage was used as an unmanned orbital target vehicle for the Gemini manned spacecraft to practice rendezvous. However, the launch vehicle family was developed for the Air Force. The Atlas-Agena was a rocket, with a stage-and-a-half Atlas missile as the first stage. Initially, Atlas D missiles, redesignated as the LV-3, were used as the first stage and these were later replaced by the standardized Atlas SLV-3, and its derivatives, the SLV-3A and B. The final Atlas-Agena launch used an Atlas E/F, the earliest Agena variant was the Agena A in 1959-60, which did not have restart capability. Most of these were flown on Thor-Agena boosters for the Discoverer program and only four used Atlases, late in 1960, Lockheed introduced the uprated Agena B stage which was restartable and had longer propellant tanks for more burn time. It first flew on the Thor and did not make its maiden voyage on an Atlas for months, Atlas-Agenas were then used for DoD and NASA programs, but proved a reliability nightmare as one failure after another happened. In late 1962, after Ranger 5 suffered another booster malfunction, the board recommended improved quality control, better hardware, and also establishing one standardized launch vehicle for all space programs. The end result was the Atlas SLV-3 and Agena D, standardized versions of the Atlas D core, the Agena D first flew in July 1963 for DoD launches, but NASA continued using Agena Bs for the remaining Ranger missions. The Atlas SLV-3 meanwhile first flew in August 1964, dozens of Atlas SLV-3/Agena D boosters were flown over the following years, mostly for the KH-7 GAMBIT program, also for a few NASA missions. The last Atlas-Agena was flown in 1978 to launch SEASAT, launches were conducted from Launch Complexes 12,13 and 14 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and Launch Complexes 1 and 2 at Point Arguello. These were mounted on the section between the two stages and if the Atlas were intentionally destroyed by the RSO in flight, the Agena would blow up with it. After SECO, the range safety charges would be disabled and destruction was not possible during the Agena burn, the Ranger spacecraft were designed to impact the Moon, returning photographs of the lunar surface until their destruction. However, the orbits were not as high as desired, the Block II missions, Ranger 3, Ranger 4, and Ranger 5, were launched away from Earth in January, April, and October 1962, but all three failed. Ranger 3 missed the Moon entirely, Ranger 4s solar panels failed to deploy, and the navigation system failed, sending the probe to impact the lunar far side without returning any pictures or data. Ranger 5 suffered a failure which deprived it of power
13.
Mariner 1
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Mariner 1 was the first spacecraft of the American Mariner program, designed for a planetary flyby of Venus. It cost $18.5 million in 1962 and it was launched aboard an Atlas-Agena rocket on July 22,1962. Shortly after takeoff the rocket responded improperly to commands from the systems on the ground. With the craft effectively uncontrolled, a safety officer ordered its destructive abort 294.5 seconds after launch. According to NASAs current account for the public, The booster had performed satisfactorily until an unscheduled yaw-lift maneuver was detected by the safety officer. Faulty application of the commands made steering impossible and were directing the spacecraft towards a crash. The destruct command was sent 6 seconds before separation, after which the vehicle could not have been destroyed. The radio transponder continued to transmit signals for 64 seconds after the command had been sent. The role of software error in the launch failure remains somewhat mysterious in nature, shrouded in the ambiguities and conflicts among the accounts, official. The probes mission was accomplished by Mariner 2 which launched 5 weeks later, the Mariner 1 spacecraft was identical to Mariner 2, launched 27 August 1962. Mariner 1 consisted of a base,1.04 meters across and 0. On top of the base, was a tall pyramid-shaped mast on which the experiments were mounted which brought the total height of the spacecraft to 3.66 m. Attached to either side of the base were rectangular solar panel wings with a span of 5.05 meters. Attached by an arm to one side of the base and extending below the spacecraft was a large dish antenna. The Mariner 1 power system consisted of the two solar cell wings, one 183 ×76 cm and the other,152 ×76 cm, a power-switching and booster regulator device controlled the power flow. Propulsion for midcourse maneuvers was supplied by a monopropellant 225 N retro-rocket, the hydrazine was ignited using nitrogen tetroxide and aluminium oxide pellets, and thrust direction was controlled by four jet vanes situated below the thrust chamber. Attitude control with a 1 degree pointing error was maintained by a system of gas jets. The Sun and Earth were used as references for attitude stabilization, overall timing and control was performed by a digital Central Computer and Sequencer
14.
Mariner 2
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Mariner 2, an American space probe to Venus, was the first robotic space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter. The first successful spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program, it was a version of the Block I spacecraft of the Ranger program. The missions of Mariner 1 and 2 spacecraft are together known as the Mariner R missions. Original plans called for the probes to be launched on the Atlas-Centaur, as such, the design of the Mariner R vehicles was greatly simplified. Far less instrumentation was carried than on the Soviet Venera probes of this period, the Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 27,1962 and passed as close as 34,773 kilometers to Venus on December 14,1962. The Mariner probe consisted of a 100 cm diameter hexagonal bus, to solar panels, instrument booms. The scientific instruments on board the Mariner spacecraft were two radiometers, a sensor, a solar plasma sensor, a charged particle sensor. These instruments were designed to measure the distribution on the surface of Venus. The primary mission was to receive communications from the spacecraft in the vicinity of Venus, a second objective was to measure the interplanetary magnetic field and charged particle environment. En route to Venus, Mariner 2 measured the solar wind and it also measured interplanetary dust, which turned out to be scarcer than predicted. In addition, Mariner 2 detected high-energy charged particles coming from the Sun, including several brief solar flares, as well as cosmic rays from outside the Solar System. As it flew by Venus on December 14,1962, Mariner 2 scanned the planet with its pair of radiometers, revealing that Venus has cool clouds, the Mariner 2 spacecraft was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. It consisted of a base,1.04 meters across and 0. On top of the base was a tall pyramid-shaped mast on which the experiments were mounted. Attached to either side of the base were rectangular solar panel wings with a span of 5.05 meters. Attached by an arm to one side of the base and extending below the spacecraft was a large dish antenna. This battery was used before the panels were deployed, when the panels were not illuminated by the Sun, a power-switching and booster regulator device controlled the power flow. Propulsion for midcourse maneuvers was supplied by a monopropellant 225 N retro-rocket, the hydrazine was ignited using nitrogen tetroxide and aluminum oxide pellets, and thrust direction was controlled by four jet vanes situated below the thrust chamber
15.
Venus
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Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period of any planet in the Solar System and it is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6. Because Venus orbits within Earths orbit it is a planet and never appears to venture far from the Sun. Venus is a planet and is sometimes called Earths sister planet because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun. It is radically different from Earth in other respects and it has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 92 times that of Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a surface temperature of 735 K. Venus is shrouded by an layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid. It may have had water oceans in the past, but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a greenhouse effect. The water has probably photodissociated, and the hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. Venuss surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism. As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as the closest planet to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft, Venuss thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more missions. Venus is one of the four planets in the Solar System
16.
Ranger 3
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Ranger 3 was a space exploration mission conducted by NASA to study the Moon. The Ranger 3 robotic spacecraft was launched January 26,1962 as part of the Ranger program, due to a series of malfunctions, the spacecraft missed the Moon by 22,000 mi and entered a heliocentric orbit. Ranger 3 was the first of the Block II Ranger designs, the basic vehicle was 3.5 m in diameter. A large high-gain dish antenna was attached to the base, two wing-like solar panels were attached to the base and deployed early in the flight. Power was generated by 8680 solar cells contained in the panels which charged an 11.5 kg 1 kW·h capacity AgZn launching. Spacecraft control was provided by a computer and sequencer and an earth-controlled command system. Attitude control was provided by Sun and Earth sensors, gyroscopes, the telemetry system aboard the spacecraft consisted of two 960 MHz transmitters, one at 3 W power output and the other at 50 mW power output, the high-gain antenna, and an omnidirectional antenna. White paint, gold and chrome plating, and a plastic sheet encasing the retrorocket furnished thermal control. During prelaunch preparations for Ranger 1, the timer had accidentally been started which led to the deployment of the solar panels inside the payload shroud. JPL officials announced that testing of the Rangers systems was sufficient to root out any problems. The radar altimeter would be used for reflectivity studies, but was designed to initiate capsule separation. Preparation for Ranger 3 was complicated by issues with the Agena B stage. Agena was primarily the domain of the U. S and this delay was explained by the fact that Air Force programs such as MIDAS were taking much longer to develop than Ranger. In addition, as 1961 ended, Agena Bs had malfunctioned no less than seven times, the mission was designed to boost towards the Moon by an Atlas/Agena, undergo one mid-course correction, and impact the lunar surface. At the appropriate altitude, the capsule was to separate and the retrorockets ignite to cushion the landing, a malfunction in the booster guidance system resulted in excessive spacecraft speed. Reversed command signals caused the spacecraft to pitch in the direction and the TM antenna to lose earth acquisition. Finally, a signal during the terminal maneuver prevented transmission of useful TV pictures. Ranger 3 missed the Moon by approximately 36,800 km on 28 January and is now in a heliocentric orbit, some useful engineering data were obtained from the flight
17.
Ranger 4
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It was the first spacecraft of the United States to reach another celestial body. Ranger 4 was a Block II Ranger spacecraft virtually identical to Ranger 3, the basic vehicle was 331 kg 3.5 m in diameter. A large high-gain dish antenna was attached to the base, two wing-like solar panels were attached to the base and deployed early in the flight. Power was generated by 8680 solar cells contained in the panels which charged an 11.5 kg 1 kWh capacity AgZn launching. Spacecraft control was provided by a computer and sequencer and an Earth-controlled command system. Attitude control was provided by Sun and Earth sensors, gyroscopes, the telemetry system aboard the spacecraft consisted of two 960 MHz transmitters, one at 3 W power output and the other at 50 mW power output, the high-gain antenna, and an omnidirectional antenna. White paint, gold and chrome plating, and a plastic sheet encasing the retrorocket furnished thermal control. Because heat sterilization was suspected to have caused the malfunction of Ranger 3s computer, the seismometer capsule was also painted with a sawtooth pattern for better thermal protection. The radar altimeter would be used for reflectivity studies, but was designed to initiate capsule separation. Atlas 133D and Agena 6004 arrived at Cape Canaveral in March, unlike with previous Ranger launches, no serious difficulties were encountered in readying the launch vehicle for flight and the probe also passed all systems tests with ease. On April 20, Ranger 4 was stacked atop the booster, launch proceeded perfectly this time and there were no anomalies with either the Atlas or the Agena, which performed its second burn to send Ranger 4 on a translunar trajectory. The Atlas and Agena had both performed perfectly, in fact so well that Ranger 4 would not even need a midcourse correction burn to impact the Moon, however, this was all futile if the spacecraft was inoperative. Even though lunar impact would occur as planned, the mission was for all intents, making it a more bitter pill to swallow was the nearly-flawless launch vehicle performance. The booster problems that affected Rangers 1-3 had been resolved, only for the probe itself to completely fail, as unlike the previous missions, without solar power, Ranger 4s batteries ran down on the morning of April 26 and the radio transponder ceased operating. The tiny transmitter in the seismometer capsule continued sending out a 50-milliwatt signal, Ranger 4 impacted the far side of the Moon at 9600 km/hr at 12,49,53 UT on April 26,1962 after 64 hours of flight. The excellent performance of the Atlas-Agena booster had also raised morale and this spacecraft, similar in design to Ranger 3, was the first American spacecraft to reach another celestial body. Although the spacecraft did not achieve its objective, the Atlas-Agena-Ranger combination performed without fault for the first time. Ranger program Timeline of Solar System exploration List of artificial objects on the Moon National Space Science Data Center - Ranger 4
18.
Ranger 5
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Due to an unknown malfunction, the spacecraft ran out of power and ceased operation. It passed within 725 km of the Moon, Ranger 5 was a Block II Ranger spacecraft similar to Ranger 3 and Ranger 4. The basic vehicle was 3.5 m in diameter, a large high-gain dish antenna was attached to the base. Two wing-like solar panels were attached to the base and deployed early in the flight, power was generated by 8680 solar cells contained in the solar panels which charged an 11.5 kg 1 kWh capacity AgZn launching and backup battery. Spacecraft control was provided by a digital computer and sequencer. Attitude control was provided by six Sun and one Earth sensor, gyroscopes, the telemetry system aboard the spacecraft consisted of two 960 MHz transmitters, one at 3 W power output and the other at 50 mW power output, the high-gain antenna, and an omnidirectional antenna. White paint, gold and chrome plating, and a plastic sheet encasing the retrorocket furnished thermal control. The instrument package floated in a layer of freon within the balsawood sphere, the radar altimeter would be used for reflectivity studies, but was also designed to initiate capsule separation and ignite the retro-rocket. Ranger 5 was scheduled for launch in June 1962, but NASA instead decided to fly the Mariner Venus probes first which gave time to work out problems with the spacecraft. Republican Congressman James Fulton confronted NASA Director of the Office of Programs J. J, wyatt, noting that Mariner 1 had cost U. S. taxpayers $14 million and that there was no excuse at this point to still have failures every launch. As July 1962 ended, there had been 12 planetary probe attempts going back to 1958, the successful launch of Mariner 2 on August 22 momentarily blunted criticism of NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory and also seemed to verify the soundness of the Ranger design. Meanwhile, JPL engineers were trying to figure out what had caused the computer failure on Ranger 4. The malfunction was especially puzzling because the probe had been very thorough ground testing without any anomalies occurring. Most importantly, extra diodes and fuses were added to the lines to prevent another short from occurring. Ranger 5 was heat-sterilized like Rangers 3-4 had been, so as to prevent unintended contamination of the Moon with Earth microbes, management agreed to stop sterilizing Ranger probes, but only on Ranger 8 and up, as Rangers 6-7 had already been sterilized. On August 20, Ranger 5 began the long trip from state of California to Florida. Atlas 215D and Agena 6005 arrived later that week and prelaunch checkouts were started, initial preparations focused on the launch vehicle itself, which was causing almost as many problems as the Ranger probes themselves. Moreover, in the year between Ranger 1 and Mariner 2, there had been no improvement whatsoever in the quality control of the Atlas-Agenas, since Ranger launches had been delayed before by booster problems, technicians rushed to make sure nothing of the sort would delay Ranger 5s mission
19.
Far side of the Moon
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The far side of the Moon is the hemisphere of the Moon that always faces away from Earth. The far sides terrain is rugged, with a multitude of impact craters and it has one of the largest craters in the Solar System, the South Pole–Aitken basin. About 18 percent of the far side is visible from Earth due to libration. The remaining 82 percent remained unobserved until 1959, when the Soviet Unions Luna 3 space probe photographed it, the Soviet Academy of Sciences published the first atlas of the far side in 1960. In 1968, the Apollo 8 missions astronauts were the first humans to view this region directly when they orbited the Moon, to date, no human being has ever stood on the surface of the far side of the Moon. Astronomers have suggested installing a large telescope on the far side. Tidal forces from Earth have slowed down the Moons rotation so that the side is always facing the Earth. The other face, most of which is never visible from the Earth, is called the far side of the Moon. Over time some parts of the far side can be due to libration. In total 59 percent of the Moons surface is visible from Earth at one time or another, useful observation of the parts of the far side of the Moon occasionally visible from Earth is difficult because of the low viewing angle from Earth. While many misconstrue this to think that the dark side receives little to no sunlight, in reality, however, the near side also receives sunlight reflected from the Earth, known as earthshine. Earthshine does not reach the area of the far side which cannot be seen from Earth, only during a full moon is the whole far side of the Moon dark. The word dark has expanded to refer to the fact that communication with spacecraft can be blocked while on the far side of the Moon. The two hemispheres have distinctly different appearances, with the near side covered in multiple, large maria, the far side has a battered, densely cratered appearance with few maria. Only 1% of the surface of the far side is covered by maria and it has also been proposed that the differences between the two hemispheres may have been caused by a collision with a smaller companion moon that also originated from the Theia collision. The far side has more visible craters and this was thought to be a result of the effects of lunar lava flows, which cover and obscure craters, rather than a shielding effect from the Earth. NASA calculates that the Earth obscures only about 4 square degrees out of 41,000 square degrees of the sky as seen from the Moon and this makes the Earth negligible as a shield for the Moon. Newer research suggests that the reason the side of the moon facing Earth has fewer impact craters is heat from Earth at the time when the Moon was formed, the lunar crust consists primarily of plagioclases formed when aluminium and calcium condensed and combined with silicates in the mantle
20.
Ranger 6
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Ranger 6 was a lunar probe in the Ranger program, a robotic spacecraft series launched by NASA in the early and mid-1960s to obtain the first close-up images of the Moons surface. It was designed to achieve a lunar-impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras - two wide-angle and four narrow-angle - to accomplish these objectives, no other experiments were carried on the spacecraft. Due to a failure of the system, no images were returned. Rangers 6,7,8, and 9 were called Block 3 versions of the Ranger spacecraft. The spacecraft consisted of an aluminum frame base 1.5 m across on which was mounted the propulsion and power units. A cylindrical quasiomnidirectional antenna was seated on top of the conical tower, the overall height of the spacecraft was 3.6 m. Propulsion for the trajectory correction was provided by a 224 N thrust monopropellant hydrazine engine with four jet-vane vector control. Orientation and attitude control about three axes was enabled by twelve nitrogen gas jets coupled to a system of three gyros, four primary Sun sensors, two secondary Sun sensors, and an Earth sensor. Power was supplied by 9,792 silicon solar cells contained in the two panels, giving a total array area of 2.3 square meters and producing 200 W. Two 1200 watt-hour AgZnO batteries rated at 26.5 V with a capacity for 9 hours of operation provided power to each of the separate communication/TV camera chains, two 1000 watt-hour AgZnO batteries stored power for spacecraft operations. Communications were through the quasiomnidirectional low-gain antenna and the parabolic high-gain antenna. Transmitters aboard the spacecraft included a 60 W TV channel F at 959.52 MHz, a 60 W TV channel P at 960.05 MHz, and a 3 W transponder channel 8 at 960.58 MHz. The telecommunications equipment converted the composite video signal from the camera transmitters into an RF signal for subsequent transmission through the spacecraft high-gain antenna, sufficient video bandwidth was provided to allow for rapid framing sequences of both narrow- and wide-angle television pictures. The Cuban Missile Crisis had momentarily diverted attention from the failure of Ranger 5, NASA established a Ranger Board of Inquiry on October 29,1962, headed by Albert J. Kelley, with the mission of establishing by November 30 the reasons for the continued program failures. They also concluded that heat sterilization was damaging to the spacecraft systems. If the Thor-Agena was also counted in, there had been a total of nine times that an Agena B stage had malfunctioned in flight, moreover, it suggested that NASA needed to improve their prelaunch testing and preparation of launch vehicles. This caused some protests from the community that the gamma ray
21.
Mare Cognitum
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Mare Cognitum is a lunar mare located in a basin or large crater which sits in the second ring of Oceanus Procellarum. To the northwest of the mare is the Montes Riphaeus mountain range, the basin material is of the Lower Imbrian epoch, while the basaltic mare material is of the Upper Imbrian epoch. The Ranger 7 lunar probe impacted Mare Cognitum at the conclusion of its picture-taking mission, surveyor 3 and Apollo 12 landed near its northern shore. The outcrop of the Fra Mauro formation, where Apollo 14 landed, is located near Mare Cognitum
22.
Ranger 8
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Ranger 8 was a lunar probe in the Ranger program, a robotic spacecraft series launched by NASA in the early-to-mid-1960s to obtain the first close-up images of the Moons surface. These pictures helped select landing sites for Apollo missions and were used for scientific study, during its 1965 mission, Ranger 8 transmitted 7,137 lunar surface photographs before it crashed into the Moon as planned. This was the successful mission in the Ranger series, following Ranger 7. Ranger 8s design and purpose were very similar to those of Ranger 7 and it had six television vidicon cameras, two full-scan and four partial-scan. Its sole purpose was to document the Moons surface, Ranger spacecraft were originally designed, beginning in 1959, in three distinct phases called blocks. Rangers 6,7,8, and 9 were the Block 3 versions, the spacecraft consisted of a hexagonal aluminum frame base 1.5 m across on which was mounted the propulsion and power units, topped by a truncated conical tower that held the television cameras. A cylindrical quasi-omnidirectional antenna was seated on top of the conical tower, the overall height of the spacecraft was 3.6 m. Propulsion for the trajectory correction was provided by a 224 N thrust monopropellant hydrazine engine with four jet-vane vector control. Power was supplied by 9,792 silicon solar cells contained in the two panels, giving a total array area of 2.3 square meters and producing 200 W. Two 1200-watt-hour AgZnO batteries rated at 26.5 V with a capacity for 9 hours of operation provided power to each of the separate communication/TV camera chains, two 1000-watt-hour AgZnO batteries stored power for spacecraft operations. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras —two wide-angle and four narrow-angle —to accomplish these objectives, no other experiments were carried on the spacecraft. Communications were through the quasiomnidirectional low-gain antenna and the parabolic high-gain antenna, transmitters aboard the spacecraft included a 60-watt television channel F at 959.52 MHz, a 60-watt television channel P at 960.05 MHz, and a 3-watt transponder channel 8 at 960.58 MHz. The telecommunications equipment converted the composite video signal from the camera transmitters into a signal for subsequent transmission through the spacecrafts high-gain antenna. Sufficient video bandwidth was provided to allow for rapid framing sequences of both narrow- and wide-angle television pictures, the Atlas 196D and Agena B6006 boosters performed nominally, injecting the Agena and Ranger 8 into an Earth parking orbit at 185 km altitude after launch. Fourteen minutes later a 90-second burn of the Agena put the spacecraft into lunar transfer trajectory, the Ranger solar panels were deployed, attitude control activated, and spacecraft transmissions switched from the omniantenna to the high-gain antenna by 21,30 UT. On February 18, at a distance of 160,000 km from Earth, the planned mid-course maneuver took place, involving reorientation, during the 27-minute maneuver, spacecraft transmitter power dropped severely, so that lock was lost on all telemetry channels. This continued intermittently until the rocket burn ended, at which time power returned to normal, the telemetry dropout had no serious effects on the mission. A planned terminal sequence to point the more in the direction of flight just before reaching the Moon was cancelled to allow the cameras to cover a greater area of the Moons surface
23.
Mare Tranquillitatis
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Mare Tranquillitatis is a lunar mare that sits within the Tranquillitatis basin on the Moon. The mare material within the basin consists of basalt formed in the intermediate to young age group of the Upper Imbrian epoch, the surrounding mountains are thought to be of the Lower Imbrian epoch, but the actual basin is probably Pre-Nectarian. The basin has irregular margins and lacks a defined multiple-ringed structure, palus Somni, on the northeastern rim of the mare, is filled with the basalt that spilled over from Tranquillitatis. This Mare has a bluish tint relative to the rest of the moon. The color is due to higher metal content in the basaltic soil or rocks. Unlike many other maria, there is no mass concentration, or gravitational high, mascons were identified in the center of other maria from Doppler tracking of the five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft in 1968. The gravity field was mapped at higher resolution with later orbiters such as Lunar Prospector and GRAIL, Mare Tranquillitatis was named in 1651 by astronomers Francesco Grimaldi and Giovanni Battista Riccioli in their lunar map Almagestum novum. Surveyor 5 landed in Mare Tranquillitatis on September 11,1967 and this mare was also the landing site for the first crewed landing on the Moon on July 20,1969, at 20,18 UTC. After astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made a touchdown in the Apollo 11 Lunar Module named Eagle, Armstrong told flight controllers on Earth, Houston. The landing area at 0. 8° N,23, along the periphery of the mare are several bay-shaped features that have been given names, Sinus Amoris, Sinus Asperitatis, Sinus Concordiae, and Sinus Honoris. At the left is the east side of Mare Tranquillitatis, with the craters Franz, Lyell, the bay of dark mare at left is Sinus Concordiae, with islands of older, light highland material. At right is the crater Cauchy, which lies between the Rupes Cauchy and Cauchy rille, the center photo shows the central mare with craters Vitruvius and Gardner. At the horizon are lighter highlands at the margin of the mare. The crater Jansen is visible at the edges of both the center and right photos, the right photo shows the western mare, with the craters Dawes and the large Plinius, with the Plinius Rilles in the foreground. These photos were taken within minutes of each other as the Command Module America orbited the moon, the sun elevation drops from 46 degrees at left to 30 degrees at right. Israeli psych-progressive rock band Jericho Jones recorded a song named Mare Tranquilitatas as the track of their UK album release Junkies. The band is known as The Churchills. Mare Tranquillitatis is also the name of a composition of music by composer Vangelis on his 1976 album, Sea of Tranquility is also a song by the progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest, included in their 1977 album Gone to Earth
24.
Ranger 9
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Ranger 9 was a Lunar probe, launched in 1965 by NASA. It was designed to achieve an impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras - two wide-angle and four narrow-angle - to accomplish these objectives and these images were broadcast live on television to millions of viewers across the United States. No other experiments were carried on the spacecraft, rangers 6,7,8, and 9 were the so-called Block 3 versions of the Ranger spacecraft. The spacecraft consisted of an aluminium frame base 1.5 m across on which was mounted the propulsion and power units. A cylindrical quasiomnidirectional antenna was seated on top of the conical tower, the overall height of the spacecraft was 3.6 m. Propulsion for the trajectory correction was provided by a 224-N thrust monopropellant hydrazine engine with four jet-vane vector control. Orientation and attitude control about three axes was enabled by 12 nitrogen gas jets coupled to a system of three gyros, four primary Sun sensors, two secondary Sun sensors, and an Earth sensor. Power was supplied by 9792 Si solar cells contained in the two panels, giving a total array area of 2.3 square meters and producing 200 W. Two 1,200 watt-hour batteries rated at 26.5 V with a capacity for 9 hours of operation provided power to each of the separate communication/TV camera chains, two 1,000 watt-hour batteries stored power for spacecraft operations. Communications were through the quasiomnidirectional low-gain antenna and the parabolic high-gain antenna. Transmitters aboard the spacecraft included a 60 W TV channel F at 959.52 MHz, a 60 W TV channel P at 960.05 MHz, and a 3 W transponder channel 8 at 960.58 MHz. The telecommunications equipment converted the composite video signal from the camera transmitters into an RF signal for subsequent transmission through the spacecraft high-gain antenna, sufficient video bandwidth was provided to allow for rapid framing sequences of both narrow and wide-angle television pictures. The Atlas 204D and Agena B6007 boosters performed nominally, injecting the Agena, a 90-second Agena second burn put the spacecraft into lunar transfer trajectory. This was followed by the separation of the Agena and Ranger, seventy minutes after launch, the command was given to deploy solar panels, activate attitude control, and switch from the omniantenna to the high-gain antenna. The accuracy of the initial trajectory enabled delay of the planned mid-course correction from 22 to 23 March when the maneuver was initiated at 12,03 UT. After orientation, a 31-second rocket burn at 12,30 UT, and reorientation, Ranger 9 reached the Moon on 24 March 1965. At 13,31 UTC, a maneuver was executed to orient the spacecraft so the cameras were more in line with the flight direction to improve the resolution of the pictures
25.
Alphonsus (crater)
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Alphonsus is an ancient impact crater on the Moon that dates from the pre-Nectarian era. It is located on the highlands on the eastern end of Mare Nubium, west of the Imbrian Highlands. To the northwest is the smaller Alpetragius, the surface of Alphonsus is broken and irregular along its boundary with Ptolemaeus. The outer walls are slightly distorted and possess a somewhat hexagonal form, a low ridge system of deposited ejecta bisects the crater floor, and includes the steep central peak designated Alphonsus Alpha. This pyramid-shaped formation rises to a height of 1.5 km above the interior surface and it is not volcanic in origin, but rather is made of anorthosite like the lunar highlands. The floor is fractured by a system of rilles and contains three smaller craters surrounded by a symmetric darker halo. The Ranger 9 probe impacted in Alphonsus, a distance to the northeast of the central peak. Harold Urey said of a photograph of Alphonsus, Alphonsus was one of the primary alternative landing sites considered for both the Apollo 16 and the Apollo 17 missions. Alphonsus is one of the sites noted for transient lunar phenomena, on October 26,1956, the lunar astronomer Dinsmore Alter noted some blurring of the rilles on the floor of Alphonsus in the photographs he took in violet light. The same blurring did not occur in the photographs he took at the same time. However, few professional astronomers found this evidence of activity on the Moon very convincing. One astronomer who was intrigued by Alters observations was Nikolai A. Kozyrev, in 1958 while Kozyrev was looking for volcanic phenomenon on the moon, he observed the formation of a mist-like cloud within Alphonsus. The spectrum of the area had been measured at this time and he believed this to be the result of volcanic or related activity. However no evidence for this phenomenon has been found from lunar missions, Alphonsus is named after King Alfonso X of Castile, who had an interest in astronomy. Earlier lunar cartographers had given the different names. Michael van Langrens 1645 map calls it Ludovici XIV, Reg, fran. after Louis XIV of France, and Johannes Hevelius called it Mons Masicytus after a range of mountains in Lycia. Five tiny craters in the part of Alphonsus interior floor have been assigned names by the IAU. These are listed in the table below, by convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Alphonsus
26.
Copernicus (lunar crater)
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Copernicus is a lunar impact crater named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, located in eastern Oceanus Procellarum. It typifies craters that formed during the Copernican period in that it has a prominent ray system, Copernicus is visible using binoculars, and is located slightly northwest of the center of the Moons Earth-facing hemisphere. South of the crater is the Mare Insularum, and to the south-south west is the crater Reinhold, north of Copernicus are the Montes Carpatus, which lie at the south edge of Mare Imbrium. West of Copernicus is a group of dispersed lunar hills, due to its relative youth, the crater has remained in a relatively pristine shape since it formed. The circular rim has a hexagonal form, with a terraced inner wall. There are three distinct terraces visible, and arc-shaped landslides due to slumping of the wall as the crater debris subsided. Most likely due to its recent formation, the floor has not been flooded by lava. The terrain along the bottom is hilly in the half while the north is relatively smooth. The central peaks consist of three isolated mountainous rises climbing as high as 1.2 km above the floor and these peaks are separated from each other by valleys, and they form a rough line along an east-west axis. Infrared observations of these peaks during the 1980s determined that they were composed of the mafic form of olivine. The rays are less distinct than the long, linear rays extending from Tycho, in multiple locations the rays lie at glancing angles, instead of forming a true radial dispersal. An extensive pattern of secondary craters can also be observed surrounding Copernicus. Some of these secondary craters form sinuous chains in the ejecta, at the time this detailed image of the lunar surface was termed by NASA scientist Martin Swetnick and subsequently quoted by Time magazine as one of the great pictures of the century. The results were inconclusive, but not inconsistent with the estimated 800 million year age of crater formation, Copernicus itself was a possible landing site for the canceled Apollo 20 mission. Copernicus is named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, like many of the craters on the Moons near side, it was given its name by Giovanni Riccioli, whose 1651 nomenclature system has become standardized. Riccioli awarded Copernicus a prominent crater despite the fact that, as an Italian Jesuit, Riccioli justified the name by noting that he had symbolically thrown all the heliocentrist astronomers into the Ocean of Storms. Earlier lunar cartographers had given the different names. Pierre Gassendi named it Carthusia after the Chartreuse Mountains, michael van Langrens 1645 map calls it Phillipi IV after Philip IV of Spain
27.
Oceanus Procellarum
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Oceanus Procellarum is a vast lunar mare on the western edge of the near side of the Moon. Like all lunar maria, Oceanus Procellarum was formed by ancient basaltic flood volcanic eruptions that covered the region in a thick, unlike the other lunar maria, however, Oceanus Procellarum may or may not be contained within a single well-defined impact basin. Around its edges lie many minor bays and seas, including Mare Nubium, to the northeast, Oceanus Procellarum is separated from Mare Imbrium by the Carpathian Mountains. On its north-west edge lies the 32 km wide Aristarchus ray crater, also, the more-prominent ray-crater Copernicus lies within the eastern edge of the mare, distinctly with its bright ray materials sprawling over the darker material. On the northern edge of Oceanus Procellarum lies Sinus Roris, there are several hypotheses about the origin of Oceanus Procellarum and a related asymmetry between the near and far sides of the Moon. One of the most likely is that Procellarum was a result of an ancient giant impact on the side of the Moon. The size of the basin has been estimated to be more than 3,000 kilometers. The impact likely happened very early in the Moons history, at the time when magma ocean still existed or just ceased to exist and it deposited 5–30 km of crustal material on the far side forming highlands. If this is the case, all impact related structures such as crater rim, central peak etc. have been obliterated by later impacts, one piece of evidence in support of this hypothesis is concentration of incompatible elements and low calcium pyroxene around Oceanus Procellarum. Procellarum may have also formed by spatially inhomogeneous heating during the Moons formation. Other hypotheses include a late accretion of a companion Moon on the far side, the latter postulates that in addition to the present Moon, another smaller moon was formed from debris of the giant impact. After a few tens of millions of years it collided with the Moon, the robotic lunar probes Luna 9, Luna 13, Surveyor 1 and Surveyor 3 landed in Oceanus Procellarum. Luna 9 landed southwest of Galilaei crater in 1966, Luna 13 landed southeast of Seleucus crater, later in 1966. Surveyor 1 landed north of Flamsteed crater in 1966, and Surveyor 3 landed in 1967, the manned Apollo 12 mission also landed in Oceanus Procellarum, with astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean on board. Their landing site, within 300m of Surveyor 3, has known as Mare Cognitum
28.
Mare Nubium
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Mare Nubium is a lunar mare in the Nubium basin on the Moons near side. The mare is located just to the southeast of Oceanus Procellarum, the basin containing Mare Nubium is believed to have been part of the Pre-Nectarian system. The mare material is of the Imbrian and Eratosthenian age, bullialdus crater, a prominent feature on the west side of the mare, is of Eratosthenian age. Other features within the mare include Pitatus on the southern margin, opelt, Gould, Kies, Nicollet, Wolf, Birt, and Rupes Recta lie within the mare. Like most of the other maria on the Moon, Mare Nubium was named by Giovanni Riccioli, previously, William Gilbert had included it among the Continens Meridionalis in his map of c.1600, and Michael Van Langren had labelled it the Mare Borbonicum in his 1645 map. The first released images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009 were of the lunar highlands 200 km south of Mare Nubium, in September 2013, Spanish astronomers observed and recorded an impact event when a large rock hit the lunar surface in Mare Nubium
29.
Apollo 11
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Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20,1969, at 20,18 UTC. Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours later on July 21 at 02,56,15 UTC and they spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Michael Collins piloted the command module Columbia alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moons surface, Armstrong and Aldrin spent just under a day on the lunar surface before rendezvousing with Columbia in lunar orbit. Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16, and was the fifth manned mission of NASAs Apollo program. After being sent toward the Moon by the Saturn Vs upper stage, Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into the lunar module Eagle and landed in the Sea of Tranquility. They stayed a total of about 21.5 hours on the lunar surface, the astronauts used Eagles upper stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that blasted them out of orbit on a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and landed in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience, Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and described the event as one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Apollo 11 was the second all-veteran multi-person crew in human spaceflight history, a previous solo veteran flight had been made on Soyuz 1 in 1967 by Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Collins was originally slated to be the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 8 but was removed when he required surgery on his back and was replaced by Jim Lovell, his backup for that flight. In early 1969, Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective August 1969, charlie Duke, Capsule Communicator Ronald Evans Owen K. Garriott Don L. Low to suggest the Apollo 11 crew be less flippant in naming their craft. During early mission planning, the names Snowcone and Haystack were used and put in the news release, the Command Module was named Columbia after the Columbiad, the giant cannon shell spacecraft fired by a giant cannon in Jules Vernes 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. The Lunar Module was named Eagle for the bird of the United States, the bald eagle. The Apollo 11 mission insignia was designed by Collins, who wanted a symbol for peaceful lunar landing by the United States and he chose an eagle as the symbol, put an olive branch in its beak, and drew a lunar background with the Earth in the distance. NASA officials said the talons of the eagle looked too warlike and after some discussion, All colors are natural, with blue and gold borders around the patch. When the Eisenhower dollar coin was released in 1971, the design provided the eagle for its reverse side. The design was used for the smaller Susan B
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Surveyor program
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The Surveyor program was a NASA program that, from June 1966 through January 1968, sent seven robotic spacecraft to the surface of the Moon. Its primary goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of soft landings on the Moon, the Surveyor craft were the first American spacecraft to achieve soft landing on an extraterrestral body. The program was implemented by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory to prepare for the Apollo program, JPL selected Hughes Aircraft to develop the spacecraft system. The total cost of the Surveyor program was officially $469 million, five of the Surveyor craft successfully soft-landed on the moon, including the first one. The other two failed, Surveyor 2 crashed at high velocity after a failed mid-course correction, and Surveyor 4 was lost to contact 2.5 minutes before its scheduled touch-down, all seven spacecraft are still on the Moon, none of the missions included returning them to Earth. Some parts of Surveyor 3 were returned to Earth by the crew of Apollo 12, the camera from this craft is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The program performed several other services beyond its primary goal of demonstrating soft landings, the ability of spacecraft to make midcourse corrections was demonstrated, and the landers carried instruments to help evaluate the suitability of their landing sites for manned Apollo landings. Several Surveyor spacecraft had robotic shovels designed to test lunar soil mechanics, before the Soviet Luna 9 mission and the Surveyor project, it was unknown how deep the dust on the Moon was. If the dust was too deep, then no astronaut could land, the Surveyor program proved that landings were possible. Some of the Surveyors also had alpha scattering instruments and magnets, the Surveyor missions were the first time that NASA tested such systems in the challenging thermal and radiation environment near the Moon. Each Surveyor mission consisted of an unmanned spacecraft designed and built by Hughes Aircraft Company. The launch vehicle was the Atlas-Centaur, which injected the craft directly into trans-lunar flightpath. The remainder of the trip to the surface, lasting about 2.5 minutes, was handled by smaller doppler radar units and three vernier engines running on liquid fuels fed to them using pressurized helium. The last 3.4 meters to the surface was accomplished in free fall from zero velocity at that height and this resulted in a landing speed of about 3 m/s. Surveyor 1 required a total of about 63 hours to reach the Moon, the launch weights of the seven Surveyors ranged from 995.2 kilograms to 1,040 kilograms, and their landing weights ranged from 294.3 kilograms to 306 kilograms. There were seven Surveyor missions, five were successful, Apollo 12s Lunar Module Intrepid landed 600 feet from Surveyor 3, as planned. Surveyor 3s TV and telemetry systems were found to have been damaged by its unplanned landings, during the time of the Surveyor missions, the United States was actively involved in the Space Race with the Soviet Union. Thus, the Surveyor 1 landing in June 1966, only four months after the Soviet Luna 9 probe landed in February, was an indication the programs were at similar stages
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Lunar Orbiter program
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The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five unmanned lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moons surface, all five missions were successful, and 99% of the Moon was mapped from photographs taken with a resolution of 60 meters or better. The first three missions were dedicated to imaging 20 potential manned lunar landing sites, selected based on Earth-based observations and these were flown at low-inclination orbits. The fourth and fifth missions were devoted to broader scientific objectives and were flown in high-altitude polar orbits. Lunar Orbiter 4 photographed the entire nearside and 9% of the far side, all Lunar Orbiter craft were launched by an Atlas-Agena D launch vehicle. The Lunar Orbiters had an ingenious imaging system, which consisted of a camera, a film processing unit, a readout scanner. Both lenses, a 610 mm narrow angle high resolution lens, the axes of the two cameras were coincident so the area imaged in the HR frames were centered within the MR frame areas. The film was moved during exposure to compensate for the spacecraft velocity, the film was then processed, scanned, and the images transmitted back to Earth. During the Lunar Orbiter missions, the first pictures of Earth as a whole were taken, the first full picture of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 8 August 1967. A second photo of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 November 1967, the Boeing-Eastman Kodak proposal was announced by NASA on 20 December 1963. The main bus of the Lunar Orbiter had the shape of a truncated cone,1.65 m tall and 1.5 m in diameter at the base. The spacecraft was composed of three decks supported by trusses and an arch, four solar panels were mounted to extend out from this deck with a total span across of 3.72 m. Also extending out from the base of the spacecraft were a high gain antenna on a 1.32 m boom, above the equipment deck, the middle deck held the velocity control engine, propellant, oxidizer and pressurization tanks, Sun sensors, and micro-meteoroid detectors. The third deck consisted of a shield to protect the spacecraft from the firing of the velocity control engine. The nozzle of the engine protruded through the center of the shield, mounted on the perimeter of the top deck were four attitude control thrusters. Power of 375 W was provided by the four solar arrays containing 10,856 n/p solar cells which would run the spacecraft. The batteries were used during periods of occultation when no solar power was available. Propulsion for major maneuvers was provided by the velocity control engine
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Apollo program
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Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon, Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first manned flight in 1968. It achieved its goal of manned lunar landing, despite the setback of a 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test. After the first landing, sufficient flight hardware remained for nine follow-on landings with a plan for extended lunar geological and astrophysical exploration, Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. The crew returned to Earth safely by using the Lunar Module as a lifeboat for these functions, Apollo set several major human spaceflight milestones. It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit, Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while the final Apollo 17 mission marked the sixth Moon landing and the ninth manned mission beyond low Earth orbit. The program returned 842 pounds of rocks and soil to Earth, greatly contributing to the understanding of the Moons composition. The program laid the foundation for NASAs subsequent human spaceflight capability, Apollo also spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and manned spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The Apollo program was conceived during the Eisenhower administration in early 1960, while the Mercury capsule could only support one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, Apollo would carry three astronauts. Possible missions included ferrying crews to a station, circumlunar flights. The program was named after the Greek god of light, music, and the sun by NASA manager Abe Silverstein, who later said that I was naming the spacecraft like Id name my baby. Silverstein chose the name at home one evening, early in 1960, in July 1960, NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden announced the Apollo program to industry representatives at a series of Space Task Group conferences. Preliminary specifications were laid out for a spacecraft with a mission module cabin separate from the module. On August 30, a feasibility study competition was announced, and on October 25, meanwhile, NASA performed its own in-house spacecraft design studies led by Maxime Faget, to serve as a gauge to judge and monitor the three industry designs. In November 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president after a campaign that promised American superiority over the Soviet Union in the fields of space exploration and missile defense. Beyond military power, Kennedy used aerospace technology as a symbol of prestige, pledging to make the US not first but, first and, first if. Despite Kennedys rhetoric, he did not immediately come to a decision on the status of the Apollo program once he became president and he knew little about the technical details of the space program, and was put off by the massive financial commitment required by a manned Moon landing. On April 12,1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, Kennedy was circumspect in his response to the news, refusing to make a commitment on Americas response to the Soviets
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Pioneer program
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The Pioneer program is a series of United States unmanned space missions that were designed for planetary exploration. There were a number of missions in the program, but the most notable were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 carry a golden plaque, depicting a man and a woman and information about the origin and the creators of the probes, should any extraterrestrials find them someday. Credit for naming the first probe has been attributed to Stephen A. Saliga, while he was at a briefing, the spacecraft was described to him as a lunar-orbiting vehicle with an infrared scanning device. Saliga thought the title too long and lacked theme for an exhibit design, the earliest missions were attempts to achieve Earths escape velocity, simply to show it was feasible and study the Moon. This included the first launch by NASA which was formed from the old NACA and these missions were carried out by the US Air Force and Army. Most missions here are listed with their most recognised name, while successful, the missions returned much poorer images than the Voyager program probes would five years later. In 1978, the end of the program saw a return to the inner Solar System, with the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe, the new missions were numbered from Pioneer 6.8 AU distance to the Sun. Their orbital periods are slightly shorter than Earths. Pioneer 7 and Pioneer 8 are in orbits with 1.1 AU distance to the Sun. Their orbital periods are slightly longer than Earths. Since the probes orbital periods differ from that of the Earth, from time to time, the probes can sense parts of the Sun several days before the Suns rotation reveals it to ground-based Earth orbiting observatories. If a powerful solar magnetic storm is formed, they can warn Earth in advance, Pioneer 10 – Jupiter, interstellar medium, launched March 1972 Pioneer 11 – Jupiter, Saturn, interstellar medium, launched April 1973 Pioneer H – identical to Pioneers 10 and 11. Proposed out-of-the-ecliptic mission for 1974, but was not built
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Luna programme
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The Luna programme, occasionally called Lunik or Lunnik by western media, was a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1976. Fifteen were successful, each designed as either an orbiter or lander and they also performed many experiments, studying the Moons chemical composition, gravity, temperature, and radiation. Twenty-four spacecraft were formally given the Luna designation, although more were launched and those that failed to reach orbit were not publicly acknowledged at the time, and not assigned a Luna number. Those that failed in low Earth orbit were usually given Cosmos designations, the estimated cost of the Luna programme was about $4.5 billion. Luna 1 missed its intended impact with the Moon and became the first spacecraft to fall into orbit around the Sun, Luna 2 mission successfully hit the Moons surface, becoming the first man-made object to reach the Moon. Luna 3 rounded the Moon later that year, and returned the first photographs of its far side, Luna 9 became the first probe to achieve a soft landing on another planetary body. It returned five black and white stereoscopic circular panoramas, which were the first close-up shots of the Lunar surface, Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon. Luna 17 and Luna 21 carried the Lunokhod vehicles, which roamed around on the Moons terrain, another major achievement of the Luna programme, with Luna 16, Luna 20 and Luna 24, was the ability to collect samples of lunar soil and return them to Earth. The programme returned 0.326 kg of lunar samples, the Luna missions were the first space-exploration sample return missions to rely solely on advanced robotics. Luna 15, also designed to return samples from the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were already on the surface when Luna 15 began its descent. While the programme was active, it was Soviet practice not to any details of missions which had failed to achieve orbit. When details of Soviet launches were later disclosed, no launches of Luna spacecraft were found to have occurred on those dates
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Timeline of Solar System exploration
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This is a timeline of Solar System exploration ordered by date of spacecraft launch. It includes, All spacecraft that have left Earth orbit for the purposes of Solar System exploration, a small number of pioneering or notable Earth-orbiting craft. It does not include, The great majority of Earth-orbiting satellites, space probes leaving Earth orbit that are not concerned with Solar System exploration. The dates listed are dates, but the achievements noted may have occurred some time later—in some cases. Missions in italics are unfinished, i. e. have not yet designated as successes or failures. Some unitalicised missions are still operational, some in mission extension phases
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Moon
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The Moon is an astronomical body that orbits planet Earth, being Earths only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, following Jupiters satellite Io, the Moon is second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 384,400 km, the Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth. It is the second-brightest regularly visible celestial object in Earths sky, after the Sun and its surface is actually dark, although compared to the night sky it appears very bright, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its prominence in the sky and its cycle of phases have made the Moon an important cultural influence since ancient times on language, calendars, art. The Moons gravitational influence produces the ocean tides, body tides, and this matching of apparent visual size will not continue in the far future. The Moons linear distance from Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82 ±0.07 centimetres per year, since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the Moon has been visited only by uncrewed spacecraft. The usual English proper name for Earths natural satellite is the Moon, the noun moon is derived from moone, which developed from mone, which is derived from Old English mōna, which ultimately stems from Proto-Germanic *mǣnōn, like all Germanic language cognates. Occasionally, the name Luna is used, in literature, especially science fiction, Luna is used to distinguish it from other moons, while in poetry, the name has been used to denote personification of our moon. The principal modern English adjective pertaining to the Moon is lunar, a less common adjective is selenic, derived from the Ancient Greek Selene, from which is derived the prefix seleno-. Both the Greek Selene and the Roman goddess Diana were alternatively called Cynthia, the names Luna, Cynthia, and Selene are reflected in terminology for lunar orbits in words such as apolune, pericynthion, and selenocentric. The name Diana is connected to dies meaning day, several mechanisms have been proposed for the Moons formation 4.51 billion years ago, and some 60 million years after the origin of the Solar System. These hypotheses also cannot account for the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system. This hypothesis, although not perfect, perhaps best explains the evidence, eighteen months prior to an October 1984 conference on lunar origins, Bill Hartmann, Roger Phillips, and Jeff Taylor challenged fellow lunar scientists, You have eighteen months. Go back to your Apollo data, go back to computer, do whatever you have to. Dont come to our conference unless you have something to say about the Moons birth, at the 1984 conference at Kona, Hawaii, the giant impact hypothesis emerged as the most popular. Afterward there were only two groups, the giant impact camp and the agnostics. Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System, computer simulations of a giant impact have produced results that are consistent with the mass of the lunar core and the present angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system
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Lunar Precursor Robotic Program
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The Lunar Precursor Robotic Program is a completed program of robotic spacecraft missions which NASA has used to prepare for future human spaceflight missions to the Moon by 2010. Two LPRP missions, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation, the lift off above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was successful on June 18,2009. The unmanned Atlas V rocket launched the two space probes towards the Moon, where they provide a 3-D map and search for water in conjunction with the Hubble Space Telescope. This lunar program marks the first United States mission to the Moon in over ten years, neil Armstrongs first step on the Moon occurred July 20,1969, and this launch was just 32 days shy of the 40th anniversary. Projected lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecraft is on October 9,2009 at 11,30 UT, the plume from the Centaur impact may be visible through telescopes with apertures as small as 10 to 12 inches. Initially, the LPRP program was a part of the Science Mission Directorate of NASA and was called the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program, management of the RLEP program was assigned to Goddard Space Flight Center in February,2004. At that time, the Programs goal was to. initiate a series of missions to the Moon to prepare for. In 2005, responsibility for RLEP was moved to NASAs Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, in 2006, the program was renamed to the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program and management responsibility reassigned to the Marshall Space Flight Center. The US$583 million space mission comes equipped with a $504 million state of the art 4,200 pounds LRO space probe, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first mission of the LPRP program. Management of LRO was assigned to Goddard Space Flight Center in 2004, LRO launched on an Atlas V401 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on June 18,2009 at 5,32 p. m. EDT. The planned lift off for 5,12 p. m. EDT was slightly delayed by 20 minutes due to thunderstorms and it will orbit the Moon for one year, gathering high resolution images of the lunar surface that will allow the creation of detailed maps. LROs goals include finding safe landing sites for human visits to the Moon, identifying lunar resources, the LRO will provide a 3-D map of the Moons surface to allow astronauts to return to the Moon by 2020. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission is co-manifested with LRO and it was selected as a secondary payload in 2006, and management of the program was assigned to Ames Research Center. The mission will explore a permanently shadowed region of a pole by crashing the 2,300 pounds spent Centaur rocket upper stage of the Atlas V launch vehicle into a dark crater. The composition of the plume will be observed by a shepherding spacecraft. NASA expects the impact velocity will be over 9,000 km/h, the ejecta plume will be in the order of 350 tons and rise 6 miles from the surface. As LRO and LCROSS send back data, the Lunar Mapping and Modeling project will use those data to develop detailed topographic maps of the lunar surface. In addition, solar radiation levels will be mapped and modeled and these integrated data will be used to make decisions about, for example, lunar outpost designs
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Chinese Lunar Exploration Program
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The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, also known as the Change program after the Chinese moon goddess Change, is an ongoing series of robotic Moon missions by the China National Space Administration. The program incorporates lunar orbiters, landers, rovers and sample return spacecraft, a proprietary ground application system is responsible for downlink data reception. He currently serves as the chief scientist of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, another scientist, Sun Jiadong, was assigned as the general designer, while scientist Sun Zezhou was assigned as the deputy general designer. The leading program manager is Luan Enjie, a second orbiter, Change 2, was launched on 1 October 2010. Change 3, which includes a lander and rover, was launched on 1 December 2013 and it will be followed by a sample return mission, Change 5, scheduled for 2017. Such a mission may occur in 2025–2030, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is divided into three main operational phases, with each mission serving as a technology demonstrator in preparation for future missions. The first phase entailed the launch of two orbiters, and is now effectively complete. The probe also mapped the abundance and distribution of chemical elements on the lunar surface as part of an evaluation of potentially useful resources. Change 2, launched on 1 October 2010 aboard a Long March 3C rocket, reached the Moon in under 5 days, compared to 12 days for Change 1 and it then left lunar orbit and headed for the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point in order to test the TT&C network. Having done that it completed a flyby of asteroid 4179 Toutatis on 13 December 2012, the second phase is ongoing, and incorporates spacecraft capable of soft-landing on the Moon and deploying lunar rovers. Change 3, launched on 2 December 2013 aboard a Long March 3B rocket and it carried with it a 140 kg lunar rover named Yutu, which was designed to explore an area of 3 square kilometres during a 3-month mission. Change 4, originally scheduled for 2015, was a back-up for Change 3, however, as a result of the success of that mission, the configuration of Change 4 was adjusted to test equipment in advance of the next mission. The final phase will entail a lunar sample return mission, Change 5-T1 was launched on 23 October 2014. It was designed to test the lunar return spacecraft, Change 6, expected to launch in 2020 aboard a Long March 5 rocket, will build on the success of the Change 5 mission. The biggest challenge in Phase I of the program was the operation of the TT&C system, chinas standard satellite telemetry had a range of 80,000 km, but the distance between the Moon and the Earth can exceed 400,000 km when the Moon is at apogee. In addition, the Change probes had to carry out many attitude maneuvers during their flights to the Moon, the distance across China from east to west is 5,000 km, forming another challenge to TT&C continuity. At present, the combination of the TT&C system and the Chinese astronomical observation network has met the needs of the Change program, the complexity of the space environment encountered during the Change missions imposed strict requirements for environmental adaptability and reliability of the probes and their instruments. The high-radiation environment in Earth-Moon space required hardened electronics to prevent electromagnetic damage to spacecraft instruments, the Change 1 and Change 2 probes were first sent into highly elliptical Earth orbits
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Japanese Lunar Exploration Program
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It is also one of the three major enterprises of the JAXA Space Exploration Center. The main goal of the program is to elucidate the origin and evolution of the Moon, the first spacecraft of the program, the unmanned lunar orbiter SELENE, was launched from Tanegashima Space Center on September 14,2007, after being delayed several times. SELENE-2, Japans first lunar lander and rover, is expected to be launched in 2017, SELENE, nicknamed Kaguya after a lunar princess in the ancient Japanese folklore The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, is the second Japanese mission to the Moon. Launched in September 2007, it was the largest lunar mission since the Apollo program, the mission featured three separate space craft, the main orbiter, the small relay satellite, and the VLBI satellite. SELENE-2, also known as Kaguya-2, formerly known as SELENE-B, is the mission to Kaguya. SELENE-3 aims to return about 100 grams of samples from the Moon surface and it will be launched around 2020. However, due to financial issues JAXA is currently facing, this mission may be merged into the option-3 of SELENE-X, SELENE-X will be launched in the late 2010s, in view of Japan’s participation in Humans Lunar Activities foreseen. The SELENE-X may perform either of the demonstrations, Option-1. Option-2, Logistics capability demonstration for building common landers for both transportation and JAXA’s own robotic missions, option-3, Highly sophisticated in-situ robotic lander, or returning samples of the surface soil to the Earth, including the development of high speed reentry capsules. There are other options under study, and will be determined after the international exploration strategy has been clarified, MELOS is a planned mission to Mars, consisting of an orbiter, and a lander. It would be the successor to the comet probe Suisei the Mars probe Nozomi, mELOS-1 is planned to be launched in 2018, and will also have up to four small landers. Hiten, or MUSES-A is a demonstration satellite built by ISAS. LUNAR-A was an ISAS mission consisting of a space craft which would have carried two penetrators to the Moon, and deploy them at an altitude of 40 km on opposite sides of the lunar body. The penetrators were to have been braked by a rocket at an altitude of 25 km. They were designed to withstand a collision speed of 330 meters per second to penetrate the lunar regolith. Once the penetrators are deployed, the LUNAR-A spacecraft was mission-planned to maneuver to an altitude of 200 km above the lunar surface. The craft was to have carried a monochromatic imaging camera with a resolution of 30 m and it was to be Japans first large scale lunar probe. Not only was LUNAR-A one of the first two missions of the original Lunar Exploration Program, it was supposed to be the first mission in the LUNAR series, however, the mission was delayed for years, and from 2004, no launch date was set
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Roscosmos
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The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, commonly known as Roscosmos, is the governmental body responsible for the space science program of Russia and general aerospace research. The Corporation was established on the basis of the now-defunct Federal Space Agency on December 28,2015, Roscosmos was previously known as the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. The headquarters of Roscosmos are located in Moscow, while the main Mission Control space center is located in the city of Korolev. The Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center is in Star City, the Launch facilities used are Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and Vostochny Cosmodrome being built in the Russian Far East in Amur Oblast. The current Director since January 2015 is Igor Komarov, in 2015 the Russian government merged Roscosmos with the United Rocket and Space Corporation, the re-nationalized Russian space industry, to create the Roscosmos State Corporation. The Soviet space program did not have central executive agencies, instead, its organizational architecture was multi-centered, it was the design bureaus and the council of designers that had the most say, not the political leadership. The creation of a central agency after the separation of Russia from the Soviet Union was therefore a new development, Russian Space Agency was formed on February 25,1992, by a decree of President Yeltsin. Yuri Koptev, who had worked with designing Mars landers at NPO Lavochkin. In the early years, the agency suffered from lack of authority as the design bureaus fought to protect their own spheres of operation. For example, the decision to keep Mir in operation beyond 1999 was not taken by the agency, instead, another example is that the decision to develop the new Angara rocket was rather a function of Khrunichevs ability to attract resources than a conscious long-term decision by the agency. The 1990s saw serious financial problems because of decreased cash flow and this resulted in Roscosmos leading role in commercial satellite launches and space tourism. In March 2004, director Yuri Koptev was replaced by Anatoly Perminov, the Russian economy boomed throughout 2005 from high prices for exports, such as oil and gas, the outlook for future funding in 2006 appeared more favorable. The budget for 2006 was as high as 25 billion rubles, under the current 10-year budget approved, the budget of the Space Agency shall increase 5–10% per year, providing the space agency with a constant influx of money. In addition to the budget, Roscosmos plans to have over 130 billion rubles flowing into its budget by other means, such as industry investments and it is around the time US-based The Planetary Society entered a partnership with Roscosmos. In 2011, the government spent 115 billion rubles in the space programs. The proposed project core budget for 2013 to be around 128.3 billion rubles, the budget for the whole space program is,169.8 billion rubles. By 2015, the amount of the budget can be increased to 199.2 billion rubles, priorities of the Russian space program include the new Angara rocket family and development of new communications, navigation and remote Earth sensing spacecraft. The GLONASS global navigation system has for many years been one of the top priorities and has been given its own budget line in the federal space budget
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Luna-Glob
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Luna-Glob is a Moon exploration program by the Russian Federal Space Agency. It will be the first of the missions planned before the creation of a robotic lunar base. The program is based on plans dating back to 1997, due to financial problems, however, the project was put on hold only to be revived a few years later. Initially scheduled for launch in 2012 by a Soyuz-2 rocket, the mission has been delayed many times, first to 2014, as of June 2015, Luna-Glob is planned to be launched in 2024. Due to budget constraints, all Russian lunar missions have been postponed to 2025, initially, Luna-Glob was planned as orbiter with ground penetrating sensors. Four Japanese-built penetrators inherited from the Lunar-A were to be used, each 45 kg, furthermore, seismic experiments were planned, including the use of four penetrators, which will slam into the lunar surface equipped to detect seismic signals. These experiments are expected to clarify the origin of the Moon. Two of the penetrators are planned to land near the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites, luna-Resurs was initially planned as a joint orbiter-rover mission that will feature a 58 kg Russian Polar Moon Rover and lander, as part of the International Lunar Network. This mission will land in Moons south pole, examine a crater, the six wheeled, solar powered rover will land near one of the poles and will survive for a year, roving up to 150 km at a speed of 360 m/h. Because the loss of the Fobos-Grunt in 2011 which was planned as a test for the landing system, india then decided to develop the lunar mission independently. Next lander will carry a large 400 kg rover capable of in-situ soil analysis, lander with a 400 kg ascent stage will return up to 1 kilogram of surface and rock samples. This project was planned for after 2020, with a completion date of 2037. Russian lunar manned spacecraft Luna-Glob at Skyrocket Luna-Glob at RussianSpaceweb
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Soviet space program
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The Soviet space program comprised the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Soviet Union from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991. Sergey Korolev was the head of the design group, his official title was chief designer. Because of the programs classified status, and for value, announcements of the outcomes of missions were delayed until success was certain. Ultimately, as a result of Mikhail Gorbachevs policy of glasnost in the 1980s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine inherited the program. Russia created the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, now known as the Roscosmos State Corporation, on August 18,1933, GIRD launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket Gird-09, and on November 25,1933, the first hybrid-fueled rocket GIRD-X. In 1940-41 another advance in the reactive propulsion field took place, during the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germanys, but Joseph Stalins Great Purge severely damaged its progress. Many leading engineers were killed, and Korolev and others were imprisoned in the Gulag, under the direction of Dimitri Ustinov, Korolev and others inspected the drawings. Korolevs OKB-1 design bureau was dedicated to the liquid-fueled cryogenic rockets he had been experimenting with in the late 1930s, ultimately, this work resulted in the design of the R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile which was successfully tested in August 1957. The Soviet space program was tied to the USSRs Five-Year Plans, nonetheless, the first Soviet rocket with animals aboard launched in July 1951, the two dogs were recovered alive after reaching 101 km in altitude. Two months ahead of Americas first such achievement, this and subsequent flights gave the Soviets valuable experience with space medicine, Plans were approved for Earth-orbiting satellites to gain knowledge of space, and four unmanned military reconnaissance satellites, Zenit. Further planned developments called for a manned Earth orbit flight by 1964, with closed-loop life support systems and electrical rocket engines, and launched from large orbiting space stations, these plans were much more ambitious than Americas goal of landing on the moon. The Soviet space program was secondary in military funding to the Strategic Rocket Forces ICBMs, missions were planned based on rocket availability or ad hoc reasons, rather than scientific purposes. Korolev planned to move forward with the Soyuz craft and N-1 heavy booster that would be the basis of a permanent manned space station and manned exploration of the Moon. Yangel had been Korolevs assistant but with the support of the military he was given his own bureau in 1954 to work primarily on the military space program. This had the rocket engine design team including the use of hypergolic fuels. He also continued to develop his own heavy booster designs similar to Korolevs N-1 both for applications and for cargo flights into space to build future space stations. Glushko was the rocket engine designer but he had a personal friction with Korolev. Chelomei benefited from the patronage of Khrushchev and in 1960 was given the job of developing a rocket to send a manned craft around the moon
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Soviet crewed lunar programs
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The Proton-based Zond program was canceled in 1970, and the N1 / L3 program was terminated de facto in 1974 and officially canceled in 1976. Details of both Soviet programs were kept secret until 1990 when the government allowed them to be published under the policy of glasnost. As early as 1961, the Soviet leadership had made public pronouncements about landing a man on the Moon and establishing a lunar base, sergei Korolev, the senior Soviet rocket engineer, was more interested in launching a heavy orbital station and in manned flights to Mars and Venus. With this in mind, Korolev began the development of the super-heavy N-1 rocket with a 75-ton payload, the components would then be delivered by the proven middle R-7 rocket. After developing the N1, beginning in 1963, Korolev began to plan a Moon landing mission using two launches and docking, later Korolev managed to increase the payload of the N1 to 92-93 tons, providing enough power to accomplish the mission with a single launch. Another main space design bureau headed by Vladimir Chelomei proposed a competing cislunar orbiting mission using a heavy UR-500K rocket, later, Chelomei also proposed a Moon landing program with a super-heavy UR-700 rocket and a LK-700 spacecraft. The Soviet government issued a response to the American Apollo challenge after three years, Korolev organized full scale development of both programs, but died after surgery in January 1966. According to a government decree of February 1967, the first manned flyby was scheduled for mid-1967, korolevs death, along with various technical and administrative reasons, as well as a lack of financial support, resulted in both programs being delayed. One group was commanded by Vladimir Komarov and included Yuri Gagarin, and was to prepare for qualification flights of the Soyuz in Earth orbit, Komarov later died in the Soyuz 1 spaceflight when his parachute malfunctioned causing his capsule to smash into the earth at high speed. The second group was led by Alexei Leonov and concentrated on the landing mission, as a result, Leonov has the strongest claim to have been the Soviets first choice for the first man on the Moon. After Komarovs death in Soyuz 1 in 1967, Gagarin was taken out of training, a total of 18 missions were related to the N1-L3 project. Launched by a 3-staged Proton rocket, the L1 was a spacecraft from the Soyuz family, planned for 8 December 1968 for priority over the US, a first manned mission of the L1 was canceled due to the insufficient readiness of the capsule and rocket. After Apollo 8 won the first phase of the Moon Race at the end of 1968, a few reserve units of L1 made unpiloted flights, but by the end of 1970, this program was canceled. The manned landing plan adopted a method to the single launch. The Lunokhods were also equipped with controls for the cosmonauts. The N1 rocket would carry the L3 Moon expedition complex. A variant of the Soyuz craft, the Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl command ship, the 7K-OK was half the mass of the three-man Apollo orbital command ship. The Lunniy Korabl accommodated only one cosmonaut, so in the Soviet plan, the mass of the LK was 40% of the mass of the Apollo lunar lander
