Lecture 2

Statue of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev in Korolev, Russia, and the town's rocket symbol - P. Stooke photo (in public domain)

Space History - Sputnik to Apollo and Zond

The 'Space Age' is usually said to have started on October 4, 1957, with the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, by the Soviet Union. Obviously this was preceded by a long history of planning and development. The origins of space flight could be traced back to ancient stories of flight (Lucian of Samosata; Johannes Kepler) and the invention of rockets in China. And recall the line in the U. S. National Anthem about the rockets' red glare) - rockets were used against U.S. forces by the British army during the War of 1812, and the British learned to use them when they were attacked with rockets in India. In turn, India learned about rockets from China.

Pioneers of spaceflight

Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky developed the basic theories of rocket flight into space, multi-staged rockets etc. about 120 years ago. The Romanian Hermann Oberth, working in Germany, developed technical aspects of rocketry before WW2. At the same time in the United States, Robert Goddard experimented in Massachussetts with liquid-fueled rockets and solved many engineering problems. His experiments became too dangerous for a densely populated area so he moved his research to New Mexico. Meanwhile, rocket and space enthusiasts formed clubs or societies in several countries, doing both theoretical and experimental work. The most famous were the British Interplanetary Society, the German Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (VfR, Society for Space Travel), and the Russian GIRD - the Russian initials for the Group for Study of Rocket Propulsion (GIRD was a professional organization rather than an amateur club). Space was truly an international endeavour from its earliest years.
Tsiolkovsky
Oberth
Oberth
Goddard
British Interplanetary Society
Verein fur Raumschiffahrt
GIRD

Wernher von Braun

He developed military rockets (the V2 missiles) for Germany during World War 2, launched from Peenemunde on the shore of the Baltic Sea against targets in England. As the war ended he and many colleagues surrendered to U.S. forces and were taken to America where they developed modern missiles. von Braun was always primarily interested in space flight and ultimately designed the Saturn rockets which took Apollo astronauts to the Moon. His early thoughts about this were published in Colliers Magazine in the 1950s, before any satellite had been launched.
von Braun
Peenemunde
Colliers Magazine images (text in Italian)

Sergei Korolev

Russian "Chief Designer" who developed missiles and spacecraft for the Soviet Union, including the first satellites, lunar probes and human space vehicles. The Soviet forces had also obtained engineers and materials from Germany at the end of the war in Europe. Most rockets are launched from Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, but a new spaceport (Vostochny Cosmodrome) is being built in eastern Russia. Korolev's design bureau is now called Energia, and it builds Russia's crew-carrying spacecraft.
Sergei Korolev
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Energia website

First satellites

The world's first satellites were made possible by the large missiles developed for intercontinental nuclear warfare. Luckily, they have found other uses. Sputnik ('fellow traveller') was launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, demonstrating the rapid progress made since the war by Soviet science and industry. Western nations were surprised and alarmed, not by Sputnik itself but by this proof that the Soviet Union had large rockets, more than capable of dropping bombs on North America and Europe. The Western nations were jolted into action, though the US already had its own satellite plans. The second satellite, Sputnik 2, carried a dog, Laika, on November 3 1957. The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, was launched on January 31 1958.
Sputnik
Laika's story
Explorer 1

Early Moon probes

The Moon was an obvious target for early exploration. The US and Soviet Union both launched probes to the Moon from 1958 onwards. The first close flyby was by the Soviet Luna 1 probe in January 1959. Luna 2 (September 1959) struck the Moon, the first human artifact to reach another world. Luna 3 (October 1959) performed the then almost incredible feat of photographing the far side of the Moon. The first successful US lunar probe was Ranger 7 in 1964. It took the first close-up pictures of the Moon before impacting on the surface. Two more successful Rangers did the same at other places.
Luna 3
Luna 3 images
Ranger images of the Moon

First robotic landings

After photographing the Moon, an attempt to land instruments was a logical next step. Korolev's team in the Soviet Union tried many times before succeeding with the first such landing: Luna 9, launched in January 1966. This was followed by Surveyor 1, the first US landing, four months later. There was one more successful Luna of this type (Luna 13), and four more successful Surveyors. These landings revealed that the lunar landscape consisted of loose material of all sizes, dust to boulders, broken up and redistributed by meteorite impacts over billions of years.
Luna 9
Luna 9
the Surveyors
Surveyor 1 panorama

Orbital mapping

To plan for human landings, and to understand the moon better, it was necessary to obtain global images, including very high resolution pictures of potential landing sites. The US flew five Lunar Orbiter missions in 1966 and 1967 to accomplish this. The Soviet Union flew experimental orbital cameras to the Moon, sometimes just to test equipment for other planets, but never understook a systematic program of global photography. In fact they used American images to plan for human landings. The original digital files for the Lunar Orbiter images have recently been recovered by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project.
Lunar Orbiters
Lunar Orbiter photography
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

Vostok - first person in space

Korolev's second great triumph, after Sputnik, was the successful flight of Yuri Gagarin into orbit around Earth on April 12 1961. His spacecraft was called Vostok ('east'). Several Vostok spacecraft followed, flying for longer periods, flying the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova), and flying two spacecraft at once within view of each other. A modified Vostok called Voskhod carried a crew of three, the first multi-person spacecraft, and a second Voskhod flew two people including Alexei Leonov who undertook the first 'spacewalk', floating freely (but tethered!) outside the spacecraft cabin.
Gagarin
Tereshkova
Leonov

Mercury and Gemini

The US response to Gagarin's flight was to accelerate its own plans and to reach further in an attempt to stem the tide of Soviet 'firsts'. The first US astronaut, Alan Shepard, flew a sub-orbital flight (up and down, not into orbit) on May 5, 1961, in the 'Freedom 7' spacecraft. Six more Mercury flights extended these flights into orbit and increased US spaceflight experience. Then the Gemini spacecraft, carrying a crew of two, extended the Mercury results by practising many of the tasks that would be needed by Apollo. Gemini astronauts conducted spacewalks, flew alongside and eventually docked with (joined up with) other orbiting spacecraft, and stayed in space for up to two weeks, demonstrating techniques they would need to go to the Moon.
Mercury
Gemini

Apollo - the human landings

The US project to land people on the Moon, Apollo, was a great success, despite some serious problems. The decision to go to the Moon was announced by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, not for science but to show the world that the United States was at least the equal of the Soviet Union. One crew was killed during a ground test early in the program. Building experience logically, Apollo demonstrated its spacecraft in Earth orbit, then in lunar orbit, and finally in landings. Six of the seven landing flights were successful. The flight which failed to land on the Moon, Apollo 13, succeeded in returning its crew safely to Earth after an explosion on the spacecraft and a long trip around the Moon. The landings revolutionized our understanding of the Moon by returning large collections of lunar materials and leaving scientific instruments on the surface. NOTE: Stories about faked lunar landings are no more based in reality than Sasquatch and Loch Ness Monster videos, and are promoted solely to generate notoriety and cash.
Apollo missions (click names in list at bottom of page)
Apollo missions
Apollo memories
The decision to go to the Moon
Apollo landing sites
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal - transcripts of the mission communications.

Zond - a challenge to Apollo

The Soviet Union planned human Moon landings but abandoned them after serious problems arose with their largest rockets. The orbital and return module built for lunar landings flew several times without a crew, including four flights looping around the Moon and back to Earth. These spacecraft were called Zond, and they later evolved into the Soyuz spacecraft still used today to take crews and cargo to the Interenational Space Station. Zonds 6, 7 and 8 returned photographs of the far side of the Moon.
Zond missions
Soviet lunar project

Automated sample collection - Soviet response to Apollo

The Soviet Union's space planners decided to collect Moon samples with robots instead of people. This approach was cheaper and had no risk to human life. If they could do it before Apollo they would score propaganda points against the United States. Several early attempts failed, including one at exactly the same time as Apollo 11, but in 1970 they were successful with Luna 16. Altogether, the Luna 16, Luna 20 and Luna 24 missions brought back three small samples from different places, much less material than Apollo but still very useful to scientists. The Soviets also drove two rovers on the Moon by remote control, Lunokhods 1 and 2. A plan to collect soil samples with a Lunokhod rover and return the material to Earth with a Luna 24-style lander was never put into practice, but the same idea will probably be used on Mars in the future.
Sample return mission
Lunokhod panoramas

Statue of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev in Korolev, Russia, and the town's rocket symbol - P. Stooke photo (in public domain)