Zond (russian: Зонд, lit=probe) was the name given to two distinct series of

Soviet 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 nation ...

robotic spacecraft launched between 1964 and 1970. The first series, based on the

3MV planetary probe The 3MV planetary probe (short for 3rd generation Mars-Venus) is a designation for a common design used by early Soviet unmanned probes to Mars and Venus. It was an incremental improvement of earlier 2MV probes and was used for Zond 1, Zond 2 ...

, was intended to gather information about nearby planets. The second series of test spacecraft was intended as a precursor to remote-controlled robotic circumlunar loop flights, using a stripped-down variant of

Soyuz spacecraft Soyuz () is a series of spacecraft which has been in service since the 1960s, having made more than 140 flights. It was designed for the Soviet space program by the Korolev Design Bureau (now Energia). The Soyuz succeeded the Voskhod spacecraf ...

, consisting of the service and descent modules, but lacking the

orbital module The orbital module is a compartment of some space capsules used only in orbit. It is separated from the crewed reentry capsule before reentry. The orbital module provides 'habitat' space to use in orbit, while the reentry capsule tends to be focu ...

. Two tortoises and other lifeforms aboard

Zond 5 Zond 5 (russian: Зонд 5, lit=Probe 5) was a spacecraft of the Soviet Zond program. In September 1968 it became the first spaceship to travel to and circle the Moon, the first Moon mission to include animals, and the first to return safely to ...

were the first terrestrial organisms to travel around the Moon and return to Earth.

Missions based on the 3MV planetary probe

The first three missions were based on the model

, intended to explore

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...

and

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

. After two failures,

Zond 3 Zond 3 was a 1965 space probe which performed a flyby of the Moon far side, taking a number of quality photographs for its time. It was a member of the Soviet Zond program while also being part of the Mars 3MV project. It was unrelated to Zond s ...

was sent on a test mission, becoming the second spacecraft to photograph the far side of the Moon (after

Luna 3 Luna 3, or E-2A No.1 ( rus, Луна 3}) was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1959 as part of the Luna programme. It was the first mission to photograph the far side of the Moon and the third Soviet space probe to be sent to the neighborhood of th ...

). It then continued out to the orbit of Mars in order to test telemetry and spacecraft systems.

Circumlunar missions

The missions

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 ...

through

Zond 8 Zond 8, also known as L-1 No.14, was the last in the series of circumlunar spacecraft, a member of the Soviet Zond program, designed to rehearse a piloted circumlunar flight, an uncrewed version of Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed circumlunar flight spacecr ...

were test flights for the

Soviet Moonshot The Soviet crewed lunar programs were a series of programs pursued by the Soviet Union to land humans on the Moon, in competition with the United States Apollo program. The Soviet government publicly denied participating in such a competitio ...

during the

Moon 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 Soyuz 7K-L1 (also mentioned just as L1) spacecraft was used for the Moon-aimed missions, stripped down to make it possible to launch around the Moon from the Earth. They were launched on the

Proton rocket Proton (Russian: Протон) (formal designation: UR-500) is an expendable launch system used for both commercial and Russian government space launches. The first Proton rocket was launched in 1965. Modern versions of the launch system are sti ...

which was just powerful enough to send the Zond on a

free return trajectory In orbital mechanics, a free-return trajectory is a trajectory of a spacecraft traveling away from a primary body (for example, the Earth) where gravity due to a secondary body (for example, the Moon) causes the spacecraft to return to the primar ...

around the Moon without going into lunar orbit (the same kind of path flown by

Apollo 13 Apollo 13 (April 1117, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted aft ...

in its emergency abort). With minor modification, Zond was capable of carrying two

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 ...

. In the beginning, there were serious reliability problems with both the new Proton rocket and the similarly new Soyuz spacecraft, but the test flights pressed ahead with some glitches. The majority of test flights from 1967 to 1970 (

) showed problems during re-entry. The Zond spacecraft made only uncrewed automatic flights. Four of these suffered malfunctions that would have injured or killed any crew. Instrumentation flown on these missions gathered data on micrometeor flux, solar and

cosmic ray 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 ...

magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to ...

s, radio emissions, and

solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between . The composition of the sol ...

. Many photographs were taken and biological payloads were also flown.

Timetable

3MV planetary probe based missions

Zond 1 Zond 1 was a spacecraft of the Soviet Zond program. It was the second Soviet research spacecraft to reach Venus, although communications had failed by that time. It carried a 90 cm spherical landing capsule, containing experiments for chem ...

** Launched 2 April 1964 ** Communications lost 14 May 1964 ** Venus flyby 14 July 1964 *

Zond 2 Zond 2 was a Soviet space probe, a member of the Zond program, and was the sixth Soviet spacecraft to attempt a flyby of Mars. (See Exploration of Mars) It was launched on November 30, 1964 at 13:12 UTC onboard Molniya 8K78 launch vehicle fro ...

** Launched 30 November 1964 ** Communications lost May 1965 ** Mars flyby 6 August 1965 *

** Launched 18 July 1965 ** Lunar Flyby 20 July 1965 ** Communications lost 3 March 1966

Soyuz 7K-L1/L1S test missions

Kosmos 146 Kosmos 146 (russian: Космос 146 meaning ''Cosmos 146''), also known as L-1 No. 2P, was a Soviet test spacecraft precursor to the Zond series, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton K rocket. The spacecraft was designed to ...

** Launched 10 March 1967 ** Prototype Soyuz 7K-L1P launched by Proton into planned highly elliptical Earth orbit. *

Kosmos 154 Kosmos 154 (russian: Космос 154 meaning ''Cosmos 154''), also known as L-1 No.3P, was a Soviet test spacecraft launched from the Baikonur aboard a Proton-K rocket. It was a prototype Soyuz 7K-L1 launched by Proton. It was an uncrewed pr ...

** Launched 8 April 1967 ** Prototype Soyuz 7K-L1P launched by Proton and failed to go into a planned translunar trajectory. * Zond 1967A ** Launched 28 September 1967 ** Fell off course 60 seconds after launch. Escape tower took the Zond capsule safely away. The rocket crashed 65 km downrange. ** Attempted Lunar flyby *

Zond 1967B 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 pro ...

** Launched 22 November 1967 ** Second stage failure. The Zond capsule was safely recovered. The rocket crashed 300 km downrange. ** Attempted Lunar flyby *

** Launched 2 March 1968 ** Study of remote regions of circumterrestrial space, development of new on-board systems and units of space stations. ** Returned to Earth 7 March 1968 – Self destruct system automatically blew up the capsule at 10 to 15 km altitude, 180–200 km off the African coast at Guinea. *

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 ...

** Launched 23 April 1968 ** Second stage failed 260 seconds after launch. ** Attempted Lunar flyby *

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 ...

(Zond 7K-L1 s/n 8L) ** Launched 21 July 1968 ** Block D stage exploded on the pad, killing three people. *

** Launched 15 September 1968 ** Circumlunar 18 September 1968 ** Returned to Earth 21 September 1968 ** A biological payload of 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, wine flies, meal worms, plants, seeds, bacteria, and other living matter was included in the flight and were the first Earth lifeforms to travel around the Moon and return safely. ** The first spacecraft to circle the Moon and return to land on Earth. *

Zond 6 Zond 6 was a formal member of the Soviet Zond program, and an unmanned version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 manned Moon-flyby spacecraft. It was launched on a lunar flyby mission from a parent satellite (68-101B) in Earth parking orbit. The spacecraft ...

** Launched 10 November 1968 ** Circumlunar 14 November 1968 ** Returned to Earth 17 November 1968 * Zond 1969A ** Launched 20 January 1969 ** Stage two shut down 25 seconds early. Automatic flight abort. The capsule was safely recovered. ** Attempted Lunar flyby *

Zond L1S-1 Zond L1S-1 was a Zond capsule to be placed into orbit around the Moon by the first launch of the N1, a Soviet made super heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to land manned Soviet spacecraft on the Moon. The Zond capsule was equipped with a dum ...

** Launched 21 February 1969 ** First stage failure. The capsule escape system fired 70 seconds after launch. The capsule was recovered. ** Attempted Lunar orbiter and

N1 rocket The N1/L3 (from , "Carrier Rocket"; Cyrillic: Н1) was a super heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to deliver payloads beyond low Earth orbit. The N1 was the Soviet counterpart to the US Saturn V and was intended to enable crewed travel to the ...

test * Zond L1S-2 ** Launched 3 July 1969 ** First stage failure. The Zond capsule was recovered. ** Attempted Lunar orbiter and

test *

Zond 7 Zond 7, a formal member of the Soviet Zond program and unmanned version of Soyuz 7K-L1 manned Moon-flyby spacecraft, the first truly successful test of L1, was launched towards the Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. I ...

** Launched 7 August 1969 ** Lunar flyby 11 August 1969 ** Returned to Earth 14 August 1969 *

** Launched 20 October 1970 ** Lunar flyby 24 October 1970 ** Returned to Earth 27 October 1970 * '' Zond 9'' ** Planned but cancelled. Planned for July 1969, carrying a crew of

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 ...

and

Vitali Sevastyanov Vitaly Ivanovich Sevastyanov (russian: Вита́лий Ива́нович Севастья́нов; 8 July 1935 – 5 April 2010) was a Soviet cosmonaut and an engineer who flew on the Soyuz 9 and Soyuz 18 missions. He trained as an engin ...

, but never flew. * '' Zond 10'' ** Planned but cancelled

Photos

File:ZOND.jpg, Circumlunar Zond spacecraft en route to the Moon. Artist's impression

References

Very detailed information about the Soyuz 7K-L1 used in Zond 4-8

{{URSS space probes Missions to the Moon Soviet lunar program