''Luna 5'', or ''E-6 No.10'' (Ye-6 series), was an unmanned

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 intended to land 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 ...

as part of the

Luna programme 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, ...

. It was intended to become the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, however its retrorockets failed, and the spacecraft impacted the lunar surface.

Launch

''Luna 5'' was launched by a

Molniya-M The Molniya-M (russian: Молния, meaning "lightning"), designation 8K78M, was a Soviet Union (later Russian) launch vehicle derived from the R-7 Semyorka Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The original 8K78 booster had been the ...

carrier rocket, flying 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 ...

. Liftoff occurred at 07:49:37 UTC on 9 May 1965. The spacecraft and

Blok L Blok may refer to: *Blok (surname) *Blok (comics), the fictional superhero of the DC Comics universe *Blok M, downtown shopping area in Jakarta, Indonesia *Mega Bloks, plastic building blocks produced by Mega Bloks, Incorporated *The Vlaams Blok (D ...

upper stage entered a low Earth

parking orbit A parking orbit is a temporary orbit used during the launch of a spacecraft. A launch vehicle boosts into the parking orbit, then coasts for a while, then fires again to enter the final desired trajectory. The alternative to a parking orbit is ''di ...

, before the Blok L fired to propel ''Luna 5'' towards the Moon. ''Luna 5'' became the first Soviet probe to be successfully launched towards the Moon in two years. Between it and the previous mission to be launched successfully, ''

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 ...

'', there were three launch failures: ''E-6 No.6'' and ''No.5'' in 1964 and ''

Kosmos 60 Kosmos 60 (russian: Космос 60 meaning ''Cosmos 60'') was an E-6 No.9 probe (Ye-6 series), launched by the Soviet Union. It was the sixth attempt at a lunar soft-landing mission, with a design similar to that of Luna 4. Kosmos 60 was launc ...

'' in 1965.

Failure

Moon map Smart 1 Ranger 9 Luna 5 Surveyor 7 Apollo 14

Following the mid-course correction on 10 May, the spacecraft began spinning around its main axis due to a problem in a flotation gyroscope in the I-100 guidance system unit. A subsequent attempt to fire the main engine failed because of ground control error, and the engine never fired. As a result of these failures, the soft landing attempt failed, and ''Luna 5'' impacted the Moon. The place of impact was first announced as (coast of

Mare Nubium Mare Nubium (Latin ''nūbium'', the "sea of clouds") is a lunar mare in the Nubium basin on the Moon's near side. The mare is located just to the southeast of Oceanus Procellarum. Formation The basin containing Mare Nubium is believed to ha ...

), but later it was estimated as (near crater

Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated ...

). It was the second Soviet spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, following ''

Luna 2 ''Luna 2'' ( rus, Луна 2}), originally named the Second Soviet Cosmic Rocket and nicknamed Lunik 2 in contemporaneous media, was the sixth of the Soviet Union's Luna programme spacecraft launched to the Moon, E-1 No.7. It was the first spac ...

'' in 1959. The Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory registered television images of the failed landing noted that shown it produced a plume which was visible for ten minutes. A 2017 analysis of the reprocessed images allowed to refine the impact coordinates, provide an altitude estimate of 3.7−3.9 km for the generated gas cloud and corroborate estimations published for the 2009

LCROSS The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was a robotic spacecraft operated by NASA. The mission was conceived as a low-cost means of determining the nature of hydrogen detected at the polar regions of the Moon. Launched immedi ...

impact.

References

External links

Zarya - Luna programme chronology
{{Orbital launches in 1965 Luna 05 Spacecraft launched in 1965 1965 in the Soviet Union Spacecraft that impacted the Moon May 1965 events 1965 on the Moon

Launch

Failure

See also

References

External links