Zond 5 (russian: Зонд 5, lit=Probe 5) was a spacecraft of the Soviet
Zond program
Zond (russian: Зонд, lit=probe) was the name given to two distinct series of Soviet robotic spacecraft launched between 1964 and 1970. The first series, based on the 3MV planetary probe, was intended to gather information about nearby plan ...
. In September 1968 it became the first spaceship to travel to and circle 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 ...
, the first Moon mission to include animals, and the first to return safely to Earth. Zond 5 carried the first terrestrial organisms to the vicinity of the Moon, including two
tortoises
Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like other ...
, fruit fly eggs, and plants. The
Russian tortoises underwent biological changes during the flight, but it was concluded that the changes were primarily due to starvation and that they were little affected by space travel.
A significant feature of travel to the Moon with terrestrial organisms, and their surviving the return trip, is that it establishes that transit through the
Van Allen radiation belt may be less likely to be harmful for future space travelers.
The Zond spacecraft was a version of the
Soyuz 7K-L1
The Soyuz 7K-L1 "Zond" spacecraft was designed to launch men from the Earth to circle the Moon without going into lunar orbit in the context of the Soviet crewed Moon-flyby program in the Moon race. It was based on the Soyuz 7K-OK. Several mo ...
crewed lunar-flyby spacecraft. It was launched by a
Proton-K
The Proton-K, also designated Proton 8K82K after its GRAU index or SL-12 after its model number, 8K82K, was a Russian, previously Soviet, carrier rocket derived from the earlier Proton. It was built by Khrunichev, and launched from sites 81 and ...
carrier rocket with a
Block D
Blok D (russian: Блок Д meaning Block D) is an upper stage used on Soviet and later Russian expendable launch systems, including the N1, Proton-K and Zenit.
The stage (and its derivatives) has been included in more than 320 launched roc ...
upper-stage
A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage i ...
to conduct scientific studies during its lunar
flyby.
Background
Out of the first four
circumlunar
In orbital mechanics, a circumlunar trajectory, trans-lunar trajectory or lunar free return is a type of free return trajectory which takes a spacecraft from Earth, around the far side of the Moon, and back to Earth using only gravity once the ...
missions 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 ...
there was one partial success,
Zond 4
Zond 4, part of the Soviet Zond program and an uncrewed version of Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed Moon-flyby spacecraft, was one of the first Soviet experiments towards crewed circumlunar spaceflight. It was launched to test the spaceworthiness of the ne ...
, and three failures. After 's mission in March 1968, a follow-up,
Zond 1968A Zond may refer to
* Zond program, Soviet unmanned space program undertaken from 1964 to 1970
** Zond 1, spacecraft
** Zond 2, spacecraft
** Zond 3, spacecraft
**Zond 4, spacecraft
** Zond 5, spacecraft
** Zond 3MV-1 No.2, spacecraft
**Zond 7, space ...
, was launched on 23 April. The launch failed when an erroneous abort command shut down the Proton rocket's second stage. The escape rocket fired and pulled the
descent module
A reentry capsule is the portion of a space capsule which returns to Earth following a spaceflight. The shape is determined partly by aerodynamics; a capsule is aerodynamically stable falling blunt end first, which allows only the blunt end to re ...
to safety. In July,
Zond 1968B
Zond program (Зонд; Russian for "probe") was a Soviet robotic spacecraft program launched between 1964 and 1970, using two spacecraft series, one for interplanetary exploration, and the other for lunar exploration.
Program details
The pr ...
was being prepared for launch when the second-stage rocket exploded on the launchpad, killing three people, but leaving the Proton first-stage booster rocket and the spacecraft itself with only minor damage.
The mission was originally planned to fly
cosmonauts
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
around the Moon, but the failures of and led the Soviets to send an uncrewed mission instead, from fear of the negative propaganda of an unsuccessful crewed flight.
Payload
Two
Russian tortoise
The Russian tortoise (''Testudo horsfieldii''), also commonly known as the Afghan tortoise, the Central Asian tortoise, Horsfield's tortoise, four-clawed tortoise, and the (Russian) steppe tortoise, is a threatened species of tortoise in the fam ...
s (''Agrionemys horsfieldii'') were included in the biological payload, weighing each pre-flight. Soviet scientists chose tortoises since they were easy to tightly secure. There were also two tortoises used as control specimens and four more in a
vivarium
A vivarium (Latin, literally for "place of life"; plural: ''vivaria'' or ''vivariums'') is an area, usually enclosed, for keeping and raising animals or plants for observation or research. Water-based vivaria may have open tops providing they a ...
. Twelve days before launch, the two space-bound tortoises were secured in the vehicle and deprived of food and water; the control tortoises were similarly deprived. The food deprivation was a part of pathomorphological and
histochemical
Histology,
also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures vis ...
experiments. The biological payload also included
fruit fly eggs, cells of wheat, barley, pea, pine, carrots and tomatoes, specimens of the wildflower species ''
Tradescantia paludosa'', three strains of the single-
cell
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
Cell may also refer to:
Locations
* Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...
ed
green algae
The green algae (singular: green alga) are a group consisting of the Prasinodermophyta and its unnamed sister which contains the Chlorophyta and Charophyta/Streptophyta. The land plants (Embryophytes) have emerged deep in the Charophyte alga as ...
''
Chlorella
''Chlorella'' is a genus of about thirteen species of single-celled green algae belonging to the division Chlorophyta. The cells are spherical in shape, about 2 to 10 μm in diameter, and are without flagella. Their chloroplasts contain the ...
'', and one strain of
lysogenic bacteria.
The purpose of sending a variety of terrestrial lifeforms was to test the effect of
cosmic radiation
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...
on them.
However, the test subjects were not analogous to humans, because the choice of life forms were all
extremophiles
An extremophile (from Latin ' meaning "extreme" and Greek ' () meaning "love") is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environments that make survival challenging such as due to extreme temper ...
with a substantially higher
radioresistance
Radioresistance is the level of ionizing radiation that organisms are able to withstand.
Ionizing-radiation-resistant organisms (IRRO) were defined as organisms for which the dose of acute ionizing radiation (IR) required to achieve 90% reducti ...
. The
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
stated that a mannequin equipped with radiation sensors occupied the pilot's seat.
Kazan Optical and Mechanical Plant had developed the AFA-BA/40
imager
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of curr ...
, which was installed on the spacecraft, giving it the ability to
image
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
the Earth.
also contained
proton
A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...
detectors. could transmit some of its data back to ground stations, although data stored onboard and collected after return to Earth has less noise.
Mission
Launch and trajectory
launched on 14 September 1968 at 9:42.10UTC, from
Site 81 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 ...
. The thrust of the third-stage rocket was terminated at , which was the start of a 251-second coast. , the upper-stage rocket, ignited and burned for 108 seconds, placing the spacecraft into a parking orbit of . Fifty-six minutes into the parking orbit the fired a final time for the
trans-lunar injection
A trans-lunar injection (TLI) is a propulsive maneuver used to set a spacecraft on a trajectory that will cause it to arrive at the Moon.
History
The first space probe to attempt TLI was the Soviet Union's Luna 1 on January 2, 1959 which wa ...
.
After this maneuver, the launch was announced to the world. Mission Control discovered a problem with 's attitude and traced the cause to a contaminated star tracker. Heat caused some of the interior coating to
outgas
Outgassing (sometimes called offgassing, particularly when in reference to indoor air quality) is the release of a gas that was dissolved, trapped, frozen, or absorbed in some material. Outgassing can include sublimation and evaporation (which ...
, which delayed an attitude correction on the way to the Moon. The maneuver was performed from Earth using the Sun and the Earth as reference points.
On 18 September, the spacecraft flew around the Moon, although it did not orbit it.
The closest distance was .
On the way back from the Moon, another star tracker failed. The spacecraft also erroneously switched off the guided reentry system. The Soviet government had deployed eight ships to the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
prior to the launch, as a precaution in case the spacecraft could not reach Soviet territory; only three of them had rescue helicopters on board.
Reentry and recovery
On 21 September, the reentry capsule entered the Earth's atmosphere. The primary landing zone was in
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
, but instead
splashed down in the Indian Ocean and was recovered by the Soviet vessels ''Borovichy'' (Боровичи) and ''Vasiliy Golovnin'' (Василий Головнин). It landed at −32°38' latitude and 65°33' longitude, from the nearest Soviet naval ship. The landing occurred at night, which impaired recovery efforts.
became the first spacecraft to circle the Moon and return to Earth. The entire journey took 6days, 18hours and 24minutes. Although the
ballistic reentry
Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. There are two main types of atmospheric entry: ''uncontrolled entry'', such as the ...
would probably have been lethal for human occupants, it did not appear to affect the biological specimens, which were alive when the descent module was opened four days after landing.
shadowed the Soviet recovery ships, collecting intelligence, but left shortly after the spacecraft was brought on board the Soviet ship.
Results and future plans
![The Soviet Union 1969 CPA 3733 stamp (Zond 5)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/The_Soviet_Union_1969_CPA_3733_stamp_%28Zond_5%29.png)
High-quality photographs of the Earth, the first photos of their kind, were taken at a distance of .
British astronomer
Bernard Lovell
Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (31 August 19136 August 2012) was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.
Early life and education
Lovell was born at Oldland Comm ...
, considered to be Britain's top space expert, said that the mission showed that the Soviets were ahead in the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...
. The
British Interplanetary Society
The British Interplanetary Society (BIS), founded in Liverpool in 1933 by Philip E. Cleator, is the oldest existing space advocacy organisation in the world. Its aim is exclusively to support and promote astronautics and space exploration.
Stru ...
believed that the USSR would be able to send cosmonauts around the Moon within a matter of months.
In October 1968, sources in the U.S. claimed the mission was not as successful as the Soviets advertised. The mission had been intended to fly closer to the Moon, and its actual distance did not allow for useful lunar photography. They also said that the angle at which the spacecraft reentered the atmosphere was too steep for a cosmonaut to have survived. The sources indicated that the spacecraft landed in the Indian Ocean when the planned location was in Soviet territory, which was a factor in the recovery taking ten hours.
The official Soviet
news agency
A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency may ...
,
TASS
The Russian News Agency TASS (russian: Информацио́нное аге́нтство Росси́и ТАСС, translit=Informatsionnoye agentstvo Rossii, or Information agency of Russia), abbreviated TASS (russian: ТАСС, label=none) ...
, announced in November 1968 that the flight had carried living animals. The tortoises were
dissected
Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause ...
on 11 October after fasting for 39days. The flying tortoises, identified as and , had lost 10% of their body weight during the trip, but showed no loss of appetite. The control tortoises lost 5% of their weight. Comparison of analyses of blood from the space-travelling tortoises and the control specimens revealed no differences. Another analysis showed the flying tortoises had elevated iron and
glycogen
Glycogen is a multibranched polysaccharide of glucose that serves as a form of energy storage in animals, fungi, and bacteria. The polysaccharide structure represents the main storage form of glucose in the body.
Glycogen functions as one o ...
levels in their
liver
The liver is a major Organ (anatomy), organ only found in vertebrates which performs many essential biological functions such as detoxification of the organism, and the Protein biosynthesis, synthesis of proteins and biochemicals necessary for ...
and that the flight also affected the internal structures of their
spleen
The spleen is an organ found in almost all vertebrates. Similar in structure to a large lymph node, it acts primarily as a blood filter. The word spleen comes . s.
The authors concluded that the changes in the flight tortoises were primarily due to starvation, with the space travel having little effect. In November 1968, it was announced that the spacecraft was planned as a precursor to a crewed lunar spacecraft. The Soviets made this announcement a month before the planned
Apollo 8
Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These ...
flight, in an attempt to show they were close to being able to carry out a crewed trip to the Moon.
Cosmonaut crew communications test and hoax
The Zond 5 caused a scare in the United States when on 19 September 1968, the voices of cosmonauts
Valery Bykovsky
Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky (russian: Вале́рий Фёдорович Быко́вский; 2 August 1934 – 27 March 2019) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew on three space flights: Vostok 5, Soyuz 22, and Soyuz 31. He was also backup for Vo ...
,
Vitaly Sevastyanov
Vitaly Ivanovich Sevastyanov (russian: Вита́лий Ива́нович Севастья́нов; 8 July 1935 – 5 April 2010) was a Soviet people, Soviet astronaut, cosmonaut and an engineer who flew on the Soyuz 9 and Soyuz 18 missions ...
and
Pavel Popovich
Pavel Romanovich Popovich (russian: Па́вел Рома́нович Попо́вич, uk, Павло Романович Попович, Pavlo Romanovych Popovych) (5 October 1930 – 29 September 2009) was a Soviet cosmonaut.
Popovich was the ...
were transmitted from the spacecraft and intercepted by
Jodrell Bank Observatory
Jodrell Bank Observatory () in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astron ...
and the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
. The cosmonauts were apparently reading out telemetry data and computer readings, and even discussing making an attempt to land. At the height of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, there was a real concern that the Soviets might actually beat
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
to the Moon.
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...
astronaut
Eugene Cernan
Eugene Andrew Cernan (; March 14, 1934 – January 16, 2017) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and fighter pilot. During the Apollo 17 mission, Cernan became the eleventh human being to ...
remarked that the incident had "shocked the hell out of us."
Popovich would later recall: "When we realized we would never make it to the moon, we decided to engage in a little bit of hooliganism. We asked our engineers to link the on-the-probe receiver to the transmitter with a jumper wire. Moon flight missions were then controlled from a command centre in
Yevpatoria
Yevpatoria ( uk, Євпаторія, Yevpatoriia; russian: Евпатория, Yevpatoriya; crh, , , gr, Ευπατορία) is a city of regional significance in Western Crimea, north of Kalamita Bay. Yevpatoria serves as the administrative ...
, in the
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
. When the probe was on its path round the Moon, I was at the center. So I took the mic and said: "The flight is proceeding according to normal; we’re approaching the surface..." Seconds later my report – as if from outer space – was received on Earth, including
ythe Americans. The U.S. space advisor
Frank Borman
Frank Frederick Borman II (born March 14, 1928) is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, businessman, and NASA astronaut. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moo ...
got a phone call from President
Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
Johnson
Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...
], who asked: 'Why is Popovich reporting from the moon?' My joke caused real turmoil. In about a month's time. Frank came to the USSR, and I was instructed to meet him at the airport. Hardly had he walked out of his plane when he shook his fist at me and said: 'Hey, you, space hooligan!'"
Location
The return capsule is on display at the
RKK Energiya museum
The RKK Energiya museum is a museum dedicated to the early achievements of Russian space exploration programmes. It is located on the grounds of the RKK Energiya factory in Korolyov, near Moscow. The date of the company founding is considered ...
, located in
Moscow Oblast
Moscow Oblast ( rus, Моско́вская о́бласть, r=Moskovskaya oblast', p=mɐˈskofskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ), or Podmoskovye ( rus, Подмоско́вье, p=pədmɐˈskovʲjə, literally "under Moscow"), is a federal subject of Rus ...
, Russia.
See also
*
Animals in space
Animals in space originally served to test the survivability of spaceflight, before human spaceflights were attempted. Later, other non-human animals were flown to investigate various biological processes and the effects microgravity and space ...
*
Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey
Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey were five mice who traveled to the Moon and circled it 75 times on the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. NASA gave them identification numbers A3305, A3326, A3352, A3356, and A3400, and their nicknames were given by the Apollo 1 ...
, five mice who orbited the Moon 75 times in December 1972, while traveling on NASA's
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...
mission
*
Korabl-Sputnik 5
Korabl-Sputnik 5 (russian: Корабль-Спутник 5 meaning ''Ship-Satellite 5'') or Vostok-3KA No.2, also known as Sputnik 10 in the West, was a Soviet spacecraft which was launched in 1961, as part of the Vostok programme. It was the last ...
, another Soviet mission some mistakenly thought was crewed.
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
External links
Zond 5 image of Earth
{{Inspace
Missions to the Moon
Zond program
Spacecraft launched in 1968
1968 in the Soviet Union
Life in space
Lunar flybys
Animals in space
Animal testing in the Soviet Union
Individual tortoises