Signals From Moon After Soft Landing

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30977, 5 February 1966, Page 15

Signals From Moon After Soft Landing

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW, February 4. Soviet space experts today closely monitored signals from the first space probe to land gently on the moon. Luna IX touched down smoothly on the moon surface around 6.45 a.m. Friday, New Zealand time, to put the Russians a leap ahead of the Lnited States in the race to get the first man on the moon.'

First reports said radio contact with Luna IX was reliable.

Luna IX, the fifth spacecraft the Russians have tried to land “soft” on the lunar surface, touched down somewhere near the Marius and Reiner craters in the Ocean of Storms after a three-day flight from the earth.

Unconfirmed reports from the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in Britain last night said Luna IX was sending back television pictures, but there was no immediate confirmation in Moscow that the probe included a television camera.

Although United States probes have sent back detailed pictures of the lunar surface just before crashing, the United States has not yet achieved a “soft” lunar landing.

The Soviet achievement means that for the first time

in the brief history of man’s exploration of space an automatic station on the moon can send back to earth details vital to plans to land men on the moon.

The success of Luna IX in touching down on the lunar surface gently—instead uf crashing into it at thousands of miles an hour—came on the fifth Soviet attempt at a “soft” landing.

As well as signalling a successful start in efforts to get a close view of the moon’s surface, the gentle landing is hailed as an unparalleled achievement in rocketry with the necessary ultra-sophisti-cation in technique needed to gauge the probe’s position and to fire its braking retrorockets at precisely the right moment. Slowing Down Scientists had to steady Luna IX down from a speed of about one mile a second

to almost zero as it touched down.

The Soviet public was told very little about Luna IX as it streaked towards the moon. The only mention of it before last night’s landing was an announcement of the launching on Monday in Tuesday’s morning newspapers.

Not even the weight of the craft has been given, though it was assumed to be about 1} tons like other Soviet moon probes. Soviet experts are cautious about when they will put their first man on the moon. No Results A Tass commentator said last night they preferred not “to tie their hands with prerise deadlines.” Tass did not disclose the results of the first contact with the space station as it lay on the moon’s surface. British scientists said Luna IX had transmitted television pictures from the moon for about 20 minutes after touch down.

The signals were monitored on the giant scanner at Jodrell Bank, but the observatory said it had no means for unscrambling them. In Moscow, the Tass news agency’s science commentator said that the only bigger sensation in this sphere of space research within the next few years would possibly be the landing of man on the moon and his return to earth.

He gave no hint on what instruments the craft was carrying, but listed some of the unanswered questions on which Luna IX may guide scientists.

“We do not know the com-

position and density of

the surface of the moon. “There are various view's about the moon’s origin and age.

“There are views that primitive forms of life were possible on the moon, if it had separated from the earth.” U.S. Attempt America’s first soft-land-ing attempt on the moon with a Surveyor spacecraft carrying two television cameras is planned for next May. At the same time America was quick to congratulate the Soviet Union on its historic feat. President Johnson said all mankind applauded the

Soviet feat, which was one that could benefit all mankind. The Soviet scientists, he said, had made a major contribution to man’s knowledge of the moon and of space.

Dr. William L. Pickering, Mie of America’s top space experts, said the soft landing was an “outstanding achievement.” Ranger Landings New Zealand-born Dr. Pickering is director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology which accomplished planned crash landings of three Ranger spacecraft on the moon. Dr. Pickering said “the difficulty of the Russian task was attested to by the number of their previous attempts to accomplish a soft landing on the moon. “The success of this mission has already added to our knowledge of the lunar surface. We now await with interest the scientific data which will be received in the next few days. Launching Soon “Surveyor, the United States soft-landing programme, is progressing well and the first launching will be conducted within a very few months. “It is to be hoped that scientific data from Surveyor will complement that received from the Soviet spacecraft and provide us with not only a detailed description of the surface of the moon but also a far better picture of the evolution of our solar system.”