A Pair of Soviet Failures

Proton engine controller and the living module door handle for an attempted lunar flyby mission fifty years ago.

The lever on the right is from the Soyuz 7K-L1 moon-flyby spacecraft living module. The ‘Zond’ spacecraft was designed to launch people from the Earth to circle the Moon and return without going into lunar orbit. The first manned flight of the L1 spacecraft was planned for late 1968 or early 1969 with cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valery Bykovsky. However, only unmanned flights were made, with four of the five test flights resulting in catastrophic malfunctions. Test flights conducted around the Moon showed problems using their star sensors for navigation. These problems caused ballistic reentry due to the failed guidance. The Soviets flew tortoises around the moon on Zond 5, and they actually survived the 20 G deceleration into the Indian Ocean.

After the successful American Apollo 8 flight around Moon, the Soviet manned moon flyby missions lost political motivation, and the program was closed in 1970 without the achievement of its primary goal.

On the left, the Proton-K Launch Vehicle Engine Ignition System, which had its maiden flight exactly 50 years ago, on March 10, 1967, and carried a Soyuz 7K-L1 as part of the Zond program. During the “Moon Race” these Proton/Soyuz/Zond flights consisted of several uncrewed test flights of Soyuz spacecraft to highly elliptical or circumlunar orbits with the unrealized aim of landing Soviet cosmonauts on the Moon. This component was instrumental for proper ignition sequencing of the engines. (dramatic video of a recent Proton failure that happened because angular velocity sensors were installed upside down)