Luna 1 – the first around the Sun

 

Ye-1 lunar probe. Credit: Roscosmos
 

Soviet Space Rocket (retroactively named Luna 1) was launched on January 2, 1959, with the goal to reach the Moon with an impact probe. Although the probe failed to impact the Moon as planned, Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity, fly close by the Moon and enter orbit around the Sun.

   Ye-1 No. 4 was the fourth Soviet spacecraft with the goal to reach the Moon with an impact probe and the first that survived the launch and was put on a trajectory to the Moon. Previous attempts, conducted on September 23, October 11, and December 4, 1958, ended in launch vehicle failures. After the launch the spacecraft with its entire launch vehicle was officially named in the Soviet press as Soviet Space Rocket (Russian: Советская космическая ракета), and unofficially as Mechta (Russian: Мечта, meaning: Dream). The probe was retroactively renamed Luna 1 in 1963.

   The spacecraft was a simple, pressurized spherical object 80 cm in diameter, made from aluminum-magnesium alloy, with several protruding antennas. It was spin stabilized at about one revolution every 14 minutes. The scientific instruments on board were: flux-gate magnetometer, sodium-iodide scintillation counter, two gas discharge Geiger counters, two micrometeorite counters, Cherenkov detector and four ion traps. Two spheres covered by pentagonal medallions were to break up and scatter across the surface on impact. The upper stage of the rocket (Blok Ye) carried additional instruments, including scintillation counter, radio transmitters and one kilogram of sodium to create an artificial comet on the outbound trajectory that could be photographed from Earth. The spacecraft mass (including the power sources installed on the upper stage) was 361.3 kg. With the third stage of the launch vehicle, the total dry mass was 1,472 kg.

   The scientific goals were to detect the magnetic field of the Moon, study the intensity and variation of cosmic rays, record photons in cosmic rays, detect lunar radiation, study the distribution of heavy nucleii in primary cosmic radiation, study the gas component of interplanetary matter, study corpuscular solar radiation, and record the incidence of meteoric particles.  

Diagram of Ye-1 probe:
1.- magnetometer; 2. - 183.6 MHz antenna; 3. - micrometeorite counter; 4. - batteries and electronics; 5. - ventilator fan;
6. - spacecraft shell; 7. - ion traps; 8. - ribbon antenna for 19.993 MHz

   On January 2, 1959, at 16:41:24 UT, the three-stage 8K72 launch vehicle, derived from the original R-7 rocket that launched Sputnik, lifted the probe from Tyuratam (now the Baikonur Cosmodrome) Site 1/5 in Kazakh S.S.R. It was put on a direct escape trajectory without first entering the Earth orbit. Due to an error in pointing of a ground-based antenna that transmitted guidance information to the launch vehicle, the second stage of the rocket fired longer than intended and imparted extra 41 meters per second in velocity. The velocity relative to the surface of the Earth was 11.34 kilometers per second. According to some sources*, the probe failed to separate after the launch from Blok Ye of the rocket. Despite this Luna 1 was able to operate normally. 
 
   On January 3, at 00:57 UT, the attached Blok Ye of the rocket released one kilogram of sodium at about 113,000 kilometers from Earth, producing a glowing orange cloud visible over the Indian Ocean with the brightness of a sixth-magnitude star. It was photographed by Soviet astronomers near Karaganda, although the quality of the images was poor. 

The pressurized container of Object Ye-1 (Luna-1 probe) under the head fairing of the third stage of the 8K72 rocket. Credit: Roscosmos

   Because of the longer than planned burn of the second stage and excessive velocity, the probe missed the Moon. About 34 hours following launch, on January 4, at 02:59 UT, the spacecraft passed by the Moon at a distance of about 6,400 kilometers (according to various sources from 5,000 to 7,500 kilometers from its surface or its center). Contact with the probe was lost when the batteries run out of power on January 5, around 07:00 UT, approximately 62 hours after launch at a distance 597,000 kilometers from Earth. The probe entered heliocentric orbit with perihelion 0.978 au, aphelion 1.318 au (146.4 by 197.2 million kilometers) and a period of 449.5 days.

   Although the probe failed to impact the Moon as planned, Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity, fly close by the Moon and  enter orbit around the Sun. The measurements obtained by the probe provided new data on the Earth's radiation belt, discovered the solar wind, established that the micrometeoroid flux between Earth and Moon was small and placed an upper limit on the strength of any magnetic field that the Moon may possess at no more than 1/10,000th that of Earth.


* Anatoly Zak. Luna-1: USSR launches the first artificial planet. RussianSpaceWeb.com

Lift-off of the 8K72 rocket with Luna 1 probe on January 2, 1959

 
Diagram of the heliocentric orbit of Luna 1

 References:

Anatoly Zak. Luna-1: USSR launches the first artificial planet. RussianSpaceWeb.com
Asif A. Siddiqi. Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958-2016. Washington, DC: NASA History Program Office, 2018. ISBN 978-1-62683-042-4
Roscosmos. A note to the Central Committee of the CPSU on the results of the launch of the automatic station, which was later named "Luna-1". January 17, 1959
Wesley T. Huntress Jr., Mikhail Ya. Marov. Soviet Robots in the Solar System: Mission Technologies and Discoveries. Springer Praxis Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4419-7897-4

 

© 2026, Andrew Mirecki

 

 

 

 

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