Luna 1 was a milestone for exploration of the moon and our solar system . However, American historians suspect the spacecraft failed in one major objective: to hit the moon. Image via NASA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nLuna 1 heads for the moon January 2, 1959<\/h3>\n
The Luna 1 spacecraft broke free of Earth\u2019s gravity \u2013 65 years ago \u2013 on this date, to head toward the moon. Many believe this craft \u2013 launched by the Soviet Union \u2013 was supposed to hit the moon. If it had, it would have been a large coup for the Soviets during the early days of the Space Race with the United States. It didn\u2019t strike the moon, but it did fly successfully past Earth\u2019s neighbor on January 4, 1959. <\/p>\n
It zoomed past the moon at a distance of 3,725 miles (5,995 km) after a flight of only 34 hours. Eventually, Luna 1 became the first spacecraft from Earth to go into orbit around our sun.<\/p>\n
The 2024 lunar calendars are here! Makes a great New Years gift. Check \u2019em out here.<\/p>\n
Luna 1 scientific results<\/h3>\n
A cool feature of Luna 1 was its release on January 3, 1959, of a large, glowing, orange trail of gas. The gas was visible over the Indian Ocean with the brightness of 6th magnitude. That\u2019s the same as the faintest star you can see with the eye alone. The gas turned out to be made of sodium vapor. It let astronomers track the spacecraft. Plus, it also served as an experiment on the behavior of gas in outer space. <\/p>\n
On its journey to the moon, the 795-pound (360-kilogram) spacecraft also picked up new data on Earth\u2019s mysterious Van Allen radiation belts \u2013 a zone of charged particles, held in place by Earth\u2019s magnetic field \u2013 which had been discovered only a year before.<\/p>\n
Bottom line: On January 2, 1959, the Luna 1 spacecraft broke free of Earth\u2019s gravity, heading toward the moon. It was the first spacecraft from Earth to sweep past the moon, 65 years ago.<\/p>\n
Read more about Luna 1<\/p>\n
Apollo 8 Earthrise photo anniversary, December 24<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n\n
\n
Editors of EarthSky<\/h4>\n
View Articles\n <\/p><\/div>\n
\n
About the Author:<\/h6>\n
The EarthSky team has a blast bringing you daily updates on your cosmos and world. We love your photos and welcome your news tips. Earth, Space, Sun, Human, Tonight. Since 1994.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luna 1 was a milestone for exploration of the moon and our solar system . However, American historians suspect the spacecraft failed in one major objective: to hit the moon.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":776340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-776339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-sky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=776339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/776340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}