''Luna 4'', or E-6 No.4 (Ye-6 series), sometimes known in the West as Sputnik 26, was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

spacecraft launched as part of the

Luna program The Luna programme (from the Russian word "Luna" meaning "Moon"), occasionally called ''Lunik'' by western media, was a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1976. Fifteen were successful ...

to attempt the first

soft landing Soft landing may refer to: *Soft landing (aeronautics) A soft landing is any type of aircraft, rocket or spacecraft landing that does not result in significant damage to or destruction of the vehicle or its payload, as opposed to a hard la ...

on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. Following a successful launch, the spacecraft failed to perform a course correction and as a result it missed the Moon, remaining instead in Earth orbit.

Mission

''Luna 4'' was launched by a

Molniya-L The Molniya (russian: Молния, meaning "lightning"), GRAU Index 8K78, was a modification of the well-known R-7 Semyorka rocket and had four stages. The 8K78 resulted from a crash program by the Korolev Bureau to develop a booster for laun ...

carrier rocket at 08:16:37 UTC on April 2, 1963. Launch occurred from Site 1/5 at the

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome ( kk, Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, translit=Baiqoñyr ğaryş ailağy, ; russian: Космодром Байконур, translit=Kosmodrom Baykonur, ) is a spaceport in an area of southern Kazakhstan leased to R ...

. After reaching an initial parking orbit of , the rocket's upper stage restarted to place ''Luna 4'' onto a translunar trajectory. The spacecraft did not perform a required midcourse correction manoeuvre, which resulted in it missing the Moon by at 1:24 UT on April 5, 1963. It then entered a barycentric 90,000 × 700,000 km Earth orbit. A lecture program entitled ''Hitting the Moon'' was scheduled to be broadcast on Radio Moscow at 7:45 p.m. the evening of April 5 but was cancelled. The spacecraft transmitted at 183.6 MHz at least until April 6.

Lunar surface close-up photography

The purpose of this experiment was to obtain information on the characteristics of the lunar surface. These characteristics included the amount of cratering, structure and size of craters, the amount, distribution, and sizes of ejecta, mechanical properties of the surface such as bearing strength, cohesiveness, compaction, etc. Determination and recognition of processes operating to produce the lunar surface features also were among the objectives of this photographic experiment.

References

External links

Zarya - Luna programme chronology
Luna 04 Spacecraft launched in 1963 1963 in the Soviet Union {{USSR-spacecraft-stub