50 years of Luna 9 first soft landing on Moons Surface and any other world.

The Peace of God to all that belong to the Light,
Dear Readers,

This 2016 can't finish in this forum without referring to another so important anniversary in the History of the Space exploration:

On February 3th 0f 1966, more than 50 years ago, it was the first soft landing of an artifact built by humanity on the surface of moon.

Our satellite has been along thousands of years one of the goal dreams in human minds, many poets sang to the moon along centuries, some of them wrote inspired by its mystery the most beautiful pages on human lyrics, like the Colombian Jose Asuncion Silva.

The robotic Spacecraft Luna 9, made by the Space program of today's Independent States community, decelerated by retrorockets reached the surface of moon. Its landing module was ejected and bounced inside an inflated balloon to finally once landed generate the first transmissions ever from it.

In between August and December of 1965 its three predecessors were the first spacecrafts to maintain parking moon orbits, but It took 10 failures along three years to be able to improve the needed navigation skills and control systems to drive distantly a soft landing, the first of History in other world.

Here the official video 50 years old describing the performance of the mission.

Please check:
www.youtube.com...

Here the complementary video showing the launching of the rocket from the Baikonour cosmodrom and other technical details of this Historic mission.

Please check:
www.youtube.com...

This Historic Technological achievement shows what the collaboration and Historic partnership in between nations of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia was able to carry on for humanity benefit, a great message for today's so tense relationship in between Ukraine and Russia.

From ending of 1966 to 1968 fully automated Missions Luna 10 to 14 replicated and extended the research results of this one.

please check:
en.wikipedia.org...

The results gotten from these sequence of missions in the second half of the decade of 1960 were determinant to carry out later in early 1970s the first fully automated robotic missions that recover samples from the Moon and also send the first rover that ever moved on its surface, and of over any other world, the Lunokhod telecontroled vehicles.

The Philosophy of the Luna programme is that exploration, not colonization, of other worlds could be carried out completely with robotic spacecrafts instead of manned ones, a trend that became the dominant one in ulterior missions not only of the Eastern European space program but the American and Chinese ones as well, that were sent to Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the rest of the solar system.

Thanks for your attention,

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

"The Philosophy of the Luna programme is that exploration, not colonization, of other worlds could be carried out completely with robotic spacecrafts instead of manned ones...."

I had to giggle to myself when I read that line. Being an oldster, I was there in 1966 and earlier, and the communist goal was to take over the world as it had consumed most of eastern Europe. They didn't get to liberate the Moon simply because their method of government and application of resources was inferior. --Not to say that everybody else's was the best, but evidently better.

Let's be buddy-buddy, but not change history in the process.

Oddly, I just happened across this today:

www.express.co.uk...

Also worth looking at the amazing pictures the USSR took on here:

mentallandscape.com...

whoops

a reply to: OneBigMonkeyToo


I read a surprising statement somewhere rather recently by someone involved with space exploration and it claimed that ALL of the Soviet's deep space signals were done with a secret arrangement with NASA's Big Ear antennae, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the premature publication of the Luna 9's images were not done as a studied insult to the planned Soviet release of those images. It is well known that we captured the signals for the Soviet Mars' attempts and sent them the signals via cable. In effect, we knew what their equipment was sending before the Soviets.

a reply to: Aliensun

Dear Aliensun,

In spite of any political motivation, we are all aware that by 1960s both superpowers used the space race as a political propaganda tool, I think there were never really clear goals to dominate the moon by any of the two nations, such a project was unreachable at all.

The manned Americans missions to the moon and the Unmanned robotic ones by the USSR were all exploratory, there were no economic resources to try to colonize the satellite and I think it is highly doubtful that we have about half a century later already achieved them.

Even China, who is a very strong emergent economy, a country that also recently in the last 3 years have reached the surface of the moon, even with another robotic rover, and the only surviving Communist power of the world, they do not have any capability to lets say establish a permanent base on the moon.

Please check:

www.space.com...

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness