ON THIS DAY - July 3, 1969 - The Soviet Union attempts to launch its giant N-1 Moon rocket. About 0.25 seconds into flight an oxidizer pump ingested a slag fragment and exploded starting a fire. The engines were automatically shut down just as the 360 foot rocket cleared the tower. The booster fell back to Earth and exploded on its launch pad creating the largest non-atomic explosion ever. Just before the explosion the escape tower fired carrying the dummy spacecraft safely away from the booster. The entire launch complex was destroyed. Shortly thereafter, in light of the Apollo Moon landings, the entire Soviet Moon program was scrapped along with the N-1. July 3, 1974 - The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 14 to the Salyut 3 space station. Although referred to as Salyut 3, the station was actually the first Almez military space station making Soyuz 14 the first manned military space mission. The crew spent 15 days in space assessing their ability to preform military reconnaissance from an orbiting platform. Once the crew returned to Earth the complex continued to function autonomously until the next crew arrived. July 3, 1998 - Japan launches Nozomi to the planet Mars. Launched aboard an MV booster, Nozomi preformed two lunar fly-bys and two Earth fly-bys to gain speed for the trip to Mars. Nozomi was to be inserted into a highly eccentric Mars orbit with a periareion 300 km above the surface, an apoareion of 15 Mars radii, and an inclination of 170 degrees with respect to the ecliptic plane. Shortly after insertion, the mast and antennas were to be deployed. The periareion would have been lowered to 150 km, the orbital period to about 38.5 hours. The spacecraft was to be spin stabilized at 7.5 rpm with its spin axis (and the dish antenna) pointed towards Earth. The periapsis portion of the orbit would have allowed in-situ measurements of the thermosphere and lower exosphere and remote sensing of the lower atmosphere and surface. The more distant parts of the orbit would be for study of the ions and neutral gas escaping from Mars and their interactions with the solar wind. The nominal mission was planned for one martian year (approximately two Earth years). An extended mission might have allowed operation of the mission for three to five years. The spacecraft was also to point its cameras at the martian moons Phobos and Deimos. Unfortunately, the last Earth fly-by failed to impart enough momentum to the spacecraft to get it all the way to Mars. A back-up plan was devised that would swing the spacecraft past Earth two more times which would allow the spacecraft to reach Mars in about four years. Although it never orbited the planet Nozomi did fly past Mars on December 14, 2003 and then went into orbit around the Sun.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 14:37:06 +0000
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