Luna 1 flyby

Luna 1 · 1959 CE · The Moon

Strike the Moon, carrying Soviet pennants.

Historical context

In March 1958 the Soviet government approved a modest plan for a first exploration of the Moon, and Korolev's OKB-1 built a simple sphere to strike it. Three launches in 1958 failed and were never announced. The fourth, in January 1959, missed the Moon; in Siddiqi's NASA chronicle it became the first human-made object to reach Earth escape velocity and the first spacecraft to orbit the Sun.

The voyage, step by step

1. The Cosmic Rocket

   2 January 1959

   At 16:41 UTC on 2 January 1959, 19:41 Moscow time, the Cosmic Rocket lifts off from Tyuratam; Siddiqi's NASA chronicle counts it the first human-made object to reach Earth escape velocity.

2. An artificial comet

   3 January 1959

   At 00:57 UTC on 3 January, 03:57 Moscow time, the upper stage releases a kilogram of sodium vapour 113,000 kilometres from Earth: an orange cloud for telescopes to photograph.

3. A wind between the planets

   1959 CE

   Konstantin Gringauz's four ion traps sample the charged gas the probe crosses, close to Earth and far beyond.

4. The Moon missed

   4 January 1959

   A late engine cut-off command from the ground sends the probe past the Moon at about 6,000 kilometres, at about 03:00 UTC on 4 January, just before 06:00 Moscow time.

5. Mechta, the Dream

   5 January 1959

   On 5 January, some sixty-two hours after launch and 597,000 kilometres out, the batteries run down; the probe goes on into an orbit around the Sun.

Outcome

Missed the Moon by some 6,000 km (other counts run from 5,000 to 7,500 km) and became, in Siddiqi's chronicle, the first spacecraft in orbit around the Sun.

Luna 1

Soviet probe of January 1959, meant to strike the Moon; it missed and, in Siddiqi's NASA chronicle, became the first human-made object to reach Earth escape velocity and the first spacecraft to orbit the Sun.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016 (NASA SP-2018-4041)Asif A. Siddiqi · NASA History Division · 2018
• Rockets and People, Volume II: Creating a Rocket Industry (NASA SP-2006-4110), chapter 25, “Lunar Assault”Boris Chertok · NASA History Division · 2006
• Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (NASA SP-2000-4408), part 1Asif A. Siddiqi · NASA History Division · 2000
• Luna 1 — NSSDCA Master Catalog (read in the Wayback Machine copy)NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive
• Советская космическая ракета (The Soviet space rocket), Ежегодник Большой советской энциклопедии 1959 (read in the Wayback Machine copy of the epizodsspace transcription)V. Yegorov · Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, Moscow · 1959
• Изучение межпланетного ионизованного газа, энергичных электронов и корпускулярного излучения Солнца при помощи трехэлектродных ловушек заряженных частиц на второй советской космической ракете, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 131 (6), 1301–1304K. I. Gringauz, V. V. Bezrukikh, V. D. Ozerov and R. E. Rybchinsky · Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Math-Net.Ru copy) · 1960
• The multi-scale nature of the solar wind, Living Reviews in Solar Physics 16, 5Daniel Verscharen, Kristopher G. Klein and Bennett A. Maruca · 2019
• Искусственная натриевая комета (The artificial sodium comet), Sem iskusstv no. 7 (134)Vladimir Kurt · 2021
• Luna-1: USSR launches the first artificial planetAnatoly Zak · RussianSpaceWeb · 2025
• Jodrell Bank's role in early space tracking activities — Part 1Sven Grahn · Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester · 2008
• Luna 1 — Wikipedia

Continue exploring

• Luna 3 flybyLuna 3 · 1959 CE
• Luna 2 impactLuna 2 · 1959 CE
• Ranger 7 impactRanger 7 · 1964 CE
• Luna 9 landingLuna 9 · 1966 CE