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Luna 5

Space probe

Field	Value
name	Luna 5
mission_type	Lunar lander
operator	Soviet space program
COSPAR_ID	1965-036A
mission_duration	3 days (launch to impact)
spacecraft_type	Ye-6
manufacturer	OKB-1
launch_mass	1476 kg
launch_date	UTC
launch_rocket	Molniya-M 8K78M
launch_site	Baikonur 1/5
orbit_reference
programme	Luna programme
previous_mission	Luna 1965A
next_mission	Luna 6
type	lander_impact
object	Lunar
arrival_date	UTC
location

Luna 5, or E-6 No.10 (Ye-6 series), was an uncrewed Soviet spacecraft intended to land on the Moon as part of the Luna programme. It was intended to become the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, however its retrorockets failed, and the spacecraft impacted the lunar surface.

Launch

Luna 5 was launched by a Molniya-M carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Liftoff occurred at 07:49:37 UTC on 9 May 1965. The spacecraft and Blok L upper stage entered a low Earth parking orbit, before the Blok L fired to propel Luna 5 towards the Moon.

Luna 5 became the first Soviet probe to be successfully launched towards the Moon in two years. Between it and the previous mission to be launched successfully, Luna 4, there were three launch failures: E-6 No.6 and No.5 in 1964 and Kosmos 60 in 1965.

Failure

First announced location of the ''Luna 5'' impact (lower right), in relation to other lunar probes and landing sites.

Following the mid-course correction on 10 May, the spacecraft began spinning around its main axis due to a problem in a flotation gyroscope in the I-100 guidance system unit. A subsequent attempt to fire the main engine failed because of ground control error, and the engine never fired. As a result of these failures, the soft landing attempt failed, and Luna 5 impacted the Moon. The place of impact was first announced as (coast of Mare Nubium), but later it was estimated as (near crater Copernicus). A 2017 analysis of the reprocessed images allowed to refine the impact coordinates, provide an altitude estimate of 3.7−3.9 km for the generated gas cloud and corroborate estimations published for the 2009 LCROSS impact.

References

|access-date = 2023-01-09

References

"Moonkind Lunar Registry – Luna-5".
(July 2018). "Luna-5 (1965): Some Results of a Failed Mission to the Moon". Cosmic Research.

Info: Wikipedia Source

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