The first photo of the far side of the moon: a bit of history

No, today is not another memorable date relating to any achievement in space exploration. On Habré the other day , the history of the Luna-1 spacecraft was published, and therefore it is worth remembering, probably, one of the most well-known spacecraft, Luna-3.


')
The fact is that this particular Soviet spacecraft received images of the far side of the moon. It happened on October 7, 1959, at 6:30 am (Moscow time).

Two lenses (focal lengths of 200 and 500 mm) made it possible to capture about half of the surface of the moon (with 2/3 of the images being the opposite side of the moon) from a distance of about 67,000 km. It should be noted that the shooting was carried out with a shutter speed of 1/200, 1/400, 1/600 and 1/800. The images appeared directly onboard the apparatus with combat robots , after which the images were transmitted using a specific photo and television system to Earth. The system was called “Yenisei”, and the shooting was carried out by a camera running a beam, with direct data transmission to Earth. Images were taken at a temporary point in the Crimea (Cat Mountain). There was a reserve point located in Kamchatka.


This is the kind of difficult way the apparatus has done in order to reach the point that is optimal for taking pictures.

Only 17 “scanned” images were transmitted to Earth, after which communication with the spacecraft was lost. Well, a little later, six months later, the device burned (planned) in the atmosphere of the Earth, with all the pictures and equipment.



Here is an interesting point - the survey was carried out not on the Soviet, but on the American film, which was found in the American equipment (as far as one can understand, the equipment was removed from the American reconnaissance balloons that carried out aerial photography on the territories of the USSR. The devices themselves or landed as a result of a malfunction / breakdown , or they were shot down). So, the domestic film, as it turned out, did not meet the technical requirements when shooting the Moon, so foreign “spy” film 35 mm wide was used (secretly from the authorities).



Unfortunately, the noise level during data transmission was very high, so these photos cannot be called high-quality. But it was they who added a lot of data to the information about the Moon, and also allowed the USSR to get the right to name the newly discovered objects on the back of the Moon.

By the way, the pictures taken by Luna-3 can be seen on the NASA website (yes, it is NASA), right here .


And here is a map of the far side of the Moon, based on the results of the photographs obtained by Luna-3 (thanks to shubinpavel ).

Via nasa + popmech