What Happened in Space News June 8

Two events on a June 8
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The Russian spacecraft Luna 6 (USSR Lunar Soft Lander) was launched on June 8, 1965.

It was intended to travel to the Moon, but, after the failure of a midcourse correction, it missed the Moon by 159,612.8 km.

This was the ninth Soviet attempt at a lunar soft-landing. The mission proceeded as planned until the major midcourse correction late on 9 June.

Although the main retro-rocket engine (the S5.5A) ignited on time, it failed to cut off and continued to fire until propellant supply was exhausted.

An investigation later indicated that the problem had been due to human error; a command had been mistakenly sent to the timer that ordered the main engine to shut down.

Although the spacecraft was sent on a completely wrong trajectory, ground controllers put the spacecraft through a series of steps to practice an actual landing, all of which were satisfactorily accomplished.

Luna 6 passed by the Moon late on 11 June at a range of 161,000 kilometers and eventually entered heliocentric orbit.

Contact was maintained to a distance of 600,000 kilometers from Earth.



The Russian spacecraft Venera 9 (USSR Venus Orbiter and Lander) was launched on June 8, 1975. (It's sister spaceraft, Venera 10, will be launched on June 14, 1975.)

Venera 9 arrived at Venus on October 22, 1975, three days before its sister spacecraft Venera 10.

Both orbiters photographed the clouds and looked at the upper atmosphere of the planet.

Differences in cloud layers were discovered at 57-70 kilometers, 52-57 kilometers, and 49-52 kilometers from the surface.

The lander arrived on the Venusian surface on November 22, 1975. During a period of 53 minutes, it transmitted the first black and white images of the planets surface. It showed sharp-edged flat rocks and a basaltic terrain. The probe in now in an orbit around Venus.