Russian Space Flight - Part Two

Now, when I did a similar series on US Spaceflight, I concentrated on human spaceflight, largely because it was what I knew best but also because so much of it is already part of our culture: Hubble photos, Viking data, earth science satellites, Voyager pictures, Mars rovers, weather satellites, cell phones, etc. But, aside from Sputnik, what do you know about Russian unmanned space?

Probably not much. Yet Russia (with our without including the Ukraine - and I'm using Soviet and Russian interchangeably) has launched more rockets into space than any other country. Period. And, as I noted yesterday, they have a sizable number of successes and firsts and an enviable launch success rate.

Naturally, there were Sputniks (and, yes, there was more than one). Sputnik provided the first live creature in space (a dog, Laika) who was also the first space casualty (who died unpleasantly). This was followed by a string of other science and satellites, including more animals (this time planned to be recovered and recovered successfully), dogs and more, in fact several trips before Yuri Gagarin's historic flight. But Yuri will have to wait until tomorrow.

They pioneered the Molniya orbits for communication satellites since geostationary orbits are not helpful for much of their high lattitude geography. These are so clever! By staggering them carefully they can get full coverage with highly elliptical orbits.

Luna program. They were the first to land a spacecraft on the moon, flyby the moon, impact the moon, send samples autonomously from the moon (and I don't believe the US ever did so except via astronaut) and had lunar rovers more than twenty years before we ever put one on Mars. One rover has traveled further than any exterrestrial rover has ever gone, nearly twice as far as our three Martian rovers (combined) had gone in five years.

With their Mars program, they managed to deliver the first Mars orbiter, the first probe to impact Mars and the first probe to "soft land" on Mars, though those achievements, rushed as they were (as both US and Russian efforts were) were not entirely successful. The soft landed probe, Mars 6, failed almost on contact and what it did send was garbled. Computer chip failures (probably a result of the high radiation environment) were endemic to the Mars probes.

Then there was the Venera and Vega programs. These included a number of atmospheric probes and even landers on Venus (though the horrific heat severely limited their lifetimes - they survived longer than planned). They include the first orbiter, probe and impactor on Venus. And, the first to successfully soft land on Venus. There were also two probes sent on to flyby Halley's comet.

Truth is, even a cursory glance through Russian spaceflight shows a great deal of creativity, innovation, even genius. They have set the bar high for autonomous everything and still do more with autonomous rendezvous than we have ever done. They are experts (and their expertise is hard won). Of course, one can't look at the early programs without also being struck by the large number of failures - some tragic as I'll go into in a later post. But I'm also impressed about their determination to change their reliability in the 1970's with extensive testing and their success as a result. Politics were also a frightful mess. And geography. In fact, they had a number of challenges and they did an incredible job.

Tomorrow, Russian human spaceflight.