Word: lunik
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Died. Sergei Korolev, 59, long-rumored head of the Soviet space program, now identified by Tass as the hitherto anonymous designer of the 1957 Sputnik and 1959 Lunik satellites as well as the Vostok and Voskhod spacecrafts used in the world's first manned flight (Yuri Gagarin, in 1961) and first space walk (Alexei Leonov, last March); of complications following surgery; in Moscow...
With modest fanfare, last week the Russians launched their first space shot aimed at landing an unmanned vehicle softly on the moon. After a successful mid-course correction of trajectory, Tass announced that the spacecraft Lunik V was expected to touch down on the lunar plain called the Sea of Clouds at 10:15 p.m. Moscow time. And there were proud hints that this time the flight might not end in the destructive crash that has marked all previous Russian and U.S. moon shots...
Then came the report that Lunik V had landed in the area of the Sea of Clouds five minutes ahead of schedule. "During the flight," said Tass, "a great deal of information was obtained which is necessary for the further elaboration of a system for soft landing on the moon's surface." No further explanation was offered, but most non-Soviet experts suspected that Lunik V's retrorockets had not ignited, and that the spacecraft had crashed on the moon while traveling at 6,000 m.p.h. Such a failure to slow down would account neatly for the early...
...added another first to the lengthening list that reminds the world how far the Russians are ahead in manned-space flight. Items: >First earth satellite, Sputnik I, Oct. 4, 1957. > First satellite to carry an animal, Sputnik II, Nov. 3, 1957. > First photograph of hidden side of the moon, Lunik III, launched Oct. 18, 1959. > First man in space, Yuri Gagarin,. April 12, 1961. > First double launching, Andrian Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich, Aug. 11, Aug. 12, 1962. > First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, June 16, 1963. > First three-man satellite, Vladimir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, Boris Yegorov...
...movie camera to a telescope. Our moon chronicle continued to note many milestones: the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1946, bouncing a radar beam off the moon; the early, unsuccessful lunar probe by the Air Force in 1958; the largely successful Pioneer probe of the same year; the Russian Lunik launchings in 1959, which suggested that the Soviets were beating the U.S. into space...