Lunik

The new planet was tiny, as planets go, but it was the first ever put into the solar system by man. The Soviet Union's moon-probe missile--promptly dubbed "Lunik" by the Russians--was a giant achievement in the young history of space exploration, the first time man had ever broken anything free from the tight gravitational hold of earth.

Lunik's great, multistage launching rocket, which probably weighed 250 tons or more, roared up from some part of the Soviet Union on Friday. When the Russians made their first announcement, they could already say with confidence that the final stage had attained escape velocity. On Saturday they could announce that at 9:59 p.m. E.S.T. Lunik had passed the moon and plunged on into outer space on an orbit around the sun. At week's end it was 318,000 miles from the earth and still going strong.

In contrast to U.S. Pioneers I and III, whose payloads were a modest 40 and 13 lbs. respectively, Lunik's sheer size was impressive. Its payload was 796.5 lbs. and the total weight of its final stage without fuel was 3,245 lbs.

Ever since the Russians launched their Sputnik III on May 15, 1958, rocket experts have known that they had the potential ability to toss a good-sized bird out of the earth's gravitational field. To put a satellite on a nearby orbit around the earth takes only about 25% less speed than the escape velocity (25,000 m.p.h.) that will free it from the earth. All the Russians needed to do was to increase slightly the power of Sputnik Ill's launching rockets or to reduce its final weight. U.S. failure to reach the moon was mainly due to the insufficient power of the launching vehicles. For the U.S. shots to succeed on their lesser thrust, every bit of sophisticated and delicate apparatus had to work perfectly, and this did not happen.

Degrees of Success. Since the Russians do not call their shots before they fire, Lunik may have been designed for several degrees of success. The most difficult would be to go into orbit around the moon, as the U.S. Air Force hoped to do with Pioneer I. But this stunt requires a small rocket to nudge the final stage into capture by the moon's gravitational field, and the Russians have not mentioned any such item. Next degree of success would be to pass around the moon and return to earth. If the Russians were trying to do this, they did not know their own strength. When Lunik passed the moon, it was going so fast (5,500 m.p.h.) that the moon's feeble gravitation could not pull it back.

The overall aim was good. U.S.'s Pioneer III deviated from its planned course by 3.5DEG. If it had reached the moon's orbit, it would have missed the moon by about 14,590 miles. The Russian miss (4,660 miles) was an error of only slightly more than 1DEG.

Solar Orbit. When Lunik escaped from earth's gravitation, there was no chance that it would fall into the sun like a man falling off a cliff. Before it was launched, it shared, like other earth-borne objects, the earth's speed on its orbit (66,600 m.p.h.). After it leaves the earth's influence (Jan. 7 or 8, according to the Russians), it retains this speed plus a little more from its own motors. Therefore it headed into a solar orbit that would not be very different from earth's, its added speed serving chiefly to make the orbit considerably more elliptical. The Russians figured that it will swing out to 122,534,000 miles from the sun and swing in to 90,969,000 miles, make a complete orbit every 15 months.

Some Russian scientists asserted that Lunik will never return to earth. This is a large statement. Lunik's orbit will sometimes cross the earth's, which reaches out as far as 94,600,000 miles from the sun. It might conceivably hit the earth's atmosphere (and burn up) during a future encounter, but it is more likely to tangle with the earth-moon system, which is nearly half a million miles across. If the moon happens to be in the right place when Lunik passes near, its gravitation can whip it into a new orbit or slow it down so that the earth can capture it.

Artificial Comet. Lunik carried into space an impressive array of scientific gadgetry. When it was well on its journey, a timing device released sodium vapor. This was designed to disperse in space, glow brightly in the sunlight and show up in the night sky like the tail of a miniature comet. It was presumably intended to help Soviet scientists get an accurate official fix on Lunik's position. The sky over Moscow was overcast at the time,, but a station at Alma-Ata in Kazakstan is said to have got a picture of the sodium cloud.

On board were instruments to observe cosmic rays, to measure the amount of gas in interplanetary space and to record the impact of particles coming from the sun. When close to the moon, the instruments would measure its magnetic field, if any, and report on the radioactivity of its surface.

For sending the findings of the instruments back to earth, Lunik had at least four radio transmitters. Three of them sent coded messages in the 20 megacycle region (19.993, 19.995, and 19.997 m.c.) that could be picked up by many radio hams. The fourth, on the higher frequency of 183.6 megacycles, sent information and also served as a radio beacon for trackers on earth to follow. Some radio experts believe that Lunik transmitted, in addition, on an unannounced frequency of 70.2 megacycles.

All the instruments and radios worked perfectly, said the Russians, and their data were being recorded for later study.

How soon the information would be given to the world was uncertain. Since Lunik was launched after the end of the International Geophysical Year, the Russians are not obligated, even theoretically, to share their scientific harvest with mankind.

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