The Moon Before Apollo Missions.

The Apollo landings from 1969 to 1972

marked a high point in lunar exploration.

But Apollo didn't just rock up onto the

moon out of a blue. It took many many

missions by probes and Landers over the

preceding years to establish if we could

send men to the moon and get them back

again.

It's quite strange to think that

even by the late 1950s just over ten

years before Neil Armstrong set foot on

the lunar surface, we knew surprisingly little about the

moon other than what we could observe

from the earth from the hypotheses we

could draw from those observations.

We knew but it had no appreciable

atmosphere or large bodies of water.

But we didn't know what the surface was

like and we didn't know what was on the

far side beside which always faces away

from Earth.

Sputnik.

After the launch of Sputnik on October 4th 1957,

the Soviets made several attempts at getting a probe to

the moon.

The first three launches in September, October and

December of 1958. All failed but the fourth one in January

1959 did work.  But they missed the moon

and lunar 1 became the first spacecraft

to escape Earth's gravity and enter

orbit around the Sun.

After another launch failure in June in September 1959,

Luna 2 became the first man-made object to

reach the surface of the moon.

These probes would not like the Landers we are

used to now, they were impactors which

meant they were designed to crash into

the surface taking measurements on the

way.

Luna 2.

During the journey to the moon lunar

2 took measurements approximately once a

minute and these were transmitted back

to earth up until the point of impact.

Luna 2's instruments also helped prove

that the moon had no real magnetic field

and also confirm the existence of the

Van Allen belt which had been discovered

by the first U.S. satellite Explorer 1.

It also released a vapor cloud with

bright orange sodium gas that expanded

up to 400 miles, 650 kilometres

across which could be seen by telescopes

on earth.

Bernard Lovell at the Jodrell Bank radio telescope.

The US was skeptical of the Soviets and didn't

believe that they had reached the moon that was until

Bernard Lovell at the Jodrell Bank radio telescope

in England using the Doppler method proved that the

signals did indeed come from the moon.

Once again the US had been caught out by the Soviets

who used Luna 2 and Sputnik as propaganda to show

the superiority of the Soviet space program. But closest the

US had come to the moon by then was Pioneer 4 which

only gotten into 37,000 miles or 60,000 kilometers.

Luna 2.

Luna 2 also proved that the impactor

method work and this would also be used

by the later U.S. Ranger probes.

Then in October 1959 the Soviet did it

again with Luna 3 when it became the

first spacecraft to photograph the far

side of the Moon.

Luna 3 was also the first craft not only to use the gravity

assist method to swing it around the

moon and back to the earth but also to

position itself in space using three

axis control with thrusters.

This was essential to control the spin of a craft

and also to position the camera towards

the lunar surface.

Project GENETRIX Balloon during launch.

The photographic film that was used the images of a

moon was high temperature, radiation hardened film

which ironically had been captured from

American Genetrix balloons which the

U.S. used as high-altitude surveillance

devices.  In effect they will be original

spies in the sky before high altitude

planes and satellites.

They would float over the Soviet Union taking pictures

before being intercepted by the US Air

Force once out of Soviet airspace.

However the Soviets found a way to shoot

them down and capture their equipment

onboard. Although the Soviets didn't know how to

make the film at the time they found a

very good use for it in Luna 3.

The pictures were transferred from a

photographic film in the Luna 3

satellite and transmitted it back to

earth using a method similar to a fax

machine.

The images were very basic but

showed that the far side of the Moon was

quite different to the side facing earth.

"We choose to go to the Moon" is the famous tagline of a speech about the challenge to reach the Moon delivered by President John F. Kennedy to a large crowd gathered at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962.

With Kennedy's announcements of the

Apollo missions and the eight year

deadline to get a man onto the moon by

the end of a decade.

It meant that the U.S. had their work cut out to find

suitable landing sites and working out

if the surface was safe to land on as

there was some speculation by some in NASA that

the lander could sink into the lunar

dust.

To get close up images the lunar surface, the latter

part of a Range program will be used. These

probes would use the impactor method

that the Soviet Luna 2 of pioneered.

Block II Ranger spacecraft.

The program will be done in three blocks or

phases with the first block of ranges 1

& 2 testing the systems without actually

trying for the moon.

The following ranges in blocks 2 & 3 all were aimed at the

moon. But things didn't get off to a good

start, with Rangers 1 through 6 failing

through a variety of reasons from launch

failures to missing the moon completely.

At one point it was called the "shoot and

hope program". It wasn't until the block

three missions that they had the first

successes with Rangers 7,8 and 9

working as planned.

The block three Ranger probe.

The block three Ranger probes had six TV cameras fitted

to them each with different lenses,

fields of views, exposure settings and

scan rates.

During the final few seconds of the flight at a height

of around around 600 meters the images captured were a

thousand times better than could be

obtained from earth-based telescopes

with the TV images being transmitted

back to earth live until the probe

impacted the surface.

Apollo 11, Lunar Lander.

In all 17,100 images of a lunar surface were sent back to

NASA including the area where Apollo 11

would land some four and a bit years later.

Due to the high failure rate of the

earlier Ranger missions the next stage

which was the send robotic probes was

brought forward to conduct tests to see

if it was possible to land on the moon

and to get a close-up look at the

composition of the lunar soil or regolith.

But once again the Soviets just

pipped the U.S. to the post with the

first soft landing of Luna 9 on the 3rd

of February 1966.

Although it wasn't the first time the Soviets had tried.

Luna 9 being their 12th attempt at a soft

landing on the moon.

Computer illustration of the landing capsule of the Soviet Luna 9 (Lunik 9) space probe unfurled on the surface of the Moon. 

Whilst Luna 9 was a soft landing it was a simple

system with the lander part ejecting up and away

from the main craft just before impact.

The sphere-shaped Lander had an

inflatable balloon to cushion it as it

fell the short distance back to the

surface. Once he settled, the sphere

opened with four petals which orientated

it to the correct position.

Luna 9 also had a TV camera which sent back the

first panoramic images of the surface.

These were intercepted by the Jodrell

Bank radio telescope and leaked to the

press in the West before the Soviets

published them.

Soviet Luna 9.

This landing also proved that a craft would not

sink into the lunar dust as was thought by some.

On the 2nd June 1966, four months after the

landing of the Soviet Luna 9, Surveyor 1

the first of the U.S. Landers touched down on the

lunar surface.

The surveyor Landers were built not only to

demonstrate the feasibility of a soft

lunar landing but also to test the

closed-loop control system of the radar

guided descent with throttle-able engines

in the space environment similar to

those that would be used in the later

Apollo Landers.

A replica of Luna 9 on display in the Museum of Air and Space Paris, Le Bourget.

The landing control was more sophisticated than

the Soviet Luna 9 with the final descent being

controlled by a doppler radar and three

vernier thruster engines and it landed

upright on three outstretched legs.

The Surveyors were fitted with TV cameras

and other sensors and some incorporated

an extendable arm which could grab and

test soil samples.  In all seven Surveyor Landers

were sent to the  moon with five of them making

successful landings.

Apollo 12 Lunar Module.

Apollo 12 later landed about 600 meters

from Surveyor 3 and several other parts

from the Surveyor craft, including the TV

camera were brought back to earth by the

Apollo 12 crew for examination to see

how they survived on the lunar surface

for the past few years.

To help select the Apollo landing sites NASA

also used the Lunar Orbiter program,

it consisted of five missions in 1966

to 67.

Lunar Orbiter program satellite.

In all these lunar satellites

photograph 99% of the moon's surface

down to a resolution of 1 meter or 3

feet, returning 2188 high-res images an

882 medium res images to earth by radio.

They also monitored radiation levels and in micro meteor

impacts with the results confirming that

the design of the Apollo craft would

protect crew for the time that they will

be on the moon.

After the missions were over the lunar orbiters

were crashed into the surface of the moon.

The Soviets continued to send lunar

orbiters with Luna 10, 11, 12, 14.

Soviet lunar craft Luna 13.

Luna 13 was the only other Lander up until the

Apollo 11 mission. In the culmination of

the moon race and as a last moment

attempt to get a lunar soil sample back

to earth before Apollo 11, the Soviet

Luna 15 which had been launched three

days before Apollo made its descent to

the moon's surface, just as Aldrin and Armstrong

were making their preparations for Apollo 11 to lift

off and head back to earth.

It's not known exactly what happened but radio

contact was lost with Luna 15 four

minutes after de-orbiting at an altitude

of about 3 kilometers with the most

probable explanation being but it had

crashed into a mountain range during the

descent.

Even if it had have landed

successfully and gathered its all

samples, Apollo 11 would still have made

it back to earth before Luna 15.

Soviet lunar craft Luna 24.

On August the 22nd 1976, almost four years

after the final Apollo 17 mission the

last soviet lunar craft Luna 24 landed

successfully and returned 170 grams or 6

ounces of lunar samples back to earth.

The moon lay silent for a further 37

years before the Chinese Cheng'e 3 lander

and its rover returned to the moon

surface in 2013.

Chinese Cheng'e 3 lander.