Kosmos 60 (russian: Космос 60 meaning ''Cosmos 60'') was an E-6 No.9 probe (Ye-6 series), launched by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. It was the sixth attempt at a

lunar Lunar most commonly means "of or relating to the Moon". Lunar may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Lunar'' (series), a series of video games * "Lunar" (song), by David Guetta * "Lunar", a song by Priestess from the 2009 album ''Prior t ...

soft-landing mission, with a design similar to that of

Luna 4 ''Luna 4'', or E-6 No.4 (Ye-6 series), sometimes known in the West as Sputnik 26, was a Soviet spacecraft launched as part of the Luna program to attempt the first soft landing on the Moon. Following a successful launch, the spacecraft failed to ...

. Kosmos 60 was launched by a Molniya 8K78 rocket, serial number G15000-24, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch took place at 09:25:31 GMT. The spacecraft achieved a

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

, with a perigee of , an apogee of , an inclination of 64.7°, and an orbital period of 89.1 minutes, but failed to leave orbit for its journey to the Moon due to a failure when the Blok L upper stage failed to fire for the trans-lunar injection burn. Instead, the spacecraft remained stranded in Earth orbit. A later investigation indicated that there might have been a short circuit in the electric converter within the control system of the spacecraft (which also controlled the Blok L stage) preventing engine ignition. It had an on-orbit mass of . The satellite reentered the Earth's atmosphere on 17 March 1965. Kosmos 60 carried two instruments: an imaging system and the SBM-10 radiation detector.https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/beyond-earth-tagged.pdf - p. 66, 2018

References

Kosmos 0060 Kosmos 0060 Spacecraft launched in 1965 {{USSR-spacecraft-stub