[FPSPACE] Lunakhod 1 launch and Voyager 1 Saturn flyby anniversaries

[Larry Klaes]

November 10: 30th Anniversary (1970) of the Luna 17 probe from
the USSR carrying the first successful unmanned rover, Lunakhod 1.  

The Soviets placed the first robot rover on the lunar
surface on November 17, 1970, calling it Lunakhod 1.  The 
rover drove off a ramp from the Luna 17 probe and explored 
Mare Imbrium for almost one full year.  Lunakhod 1 survived 
the bitter lunar nights with an onboard radioactive heat
source.  Five controllers on Earth operated each set of 
wheels of the rover.  

Though not widely known at the time, the Lunakhod series
was part of the Soviet's manned lunar program.  These
rovers would serve in the construction of the first
lunar bases.  Sadly, only one more Lunakhod made it to
Earth's moon and the third probe was left in a museum.

There would not be another successful rover to an alien
world after the Lunakhods until the Mars Pathfinder rover 
named Sojourner, which explored the Red Planet in late 1997.

Relevant URLs:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1970-095A.html

http://vsm.host.ru/e_lunhod.htm

http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craft/lunaye8.htm

http://titione75.free.fr/espace/engin/sonde/lunakhod.htm

http://www.nasm.edu/ceps/etp/tools/tools_rover.html#lunk

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/sovietsp/lunokhod.html

http://www.seds.org/pub/info/newsletters/ejasa/jasa9601.txt


November 12 - 20th Anniversary (1980) of Voyager 1 Flyby of Saturn 

Though not the first probe to flyby the planet Saturn -
that honor went to Pioneer 11 just over one year earlier -
Voyager 1 took far more data and much sharper images of
the beautiful ringed world than its predecessor.  

Among its accomplishments was a very close flyby of the 
moon Titan.  Voyager 1 learned that Titan's thick orange
atmosphere completely covered the moon's surface and was 
composed primarily of nitrogen rather than methane as 
previously thought.  The probe also discovered that Titan 
was the second largest known moon in the Sol system; that 
honor now went to Jupiter's Ganymede.  

Saturn was Voyager 1's second and last planetary system
encounter.  In 1998 the probe exceeded the distance of 
Pioneer 10 and became the farthest human-made object in 
space.

Relevant URLs:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/voyager1.html

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/voyager.html

http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/voyager.html

http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craft/voyager.htm

http://www.btinternet.com/~consty/render/probes/voyager/voyager.htm

Voyager 1 and 2 carry on their sides a golden record 
designed to relay information about humanity should any
ETI find the probes in interstellar space.  They may last
along with the probes for over one billion years during
their journeys through the Milky Way galaxy.  

For more information on the Voyager Interstellar Record:

http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/record.html

http://www.re-lab.net/welcome/

http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/voyager/voyager-record.html


Larry