Episode 42: Project Mercury, Part I

The first few years of the space race seems to deal with Soviet victories over their U.S. counterparts, but over the next few episodes (specifically next week's) I will present evidence that the Soviets had their fair share of problems, too, but were able to better hide them. They also had a few spectacular successes that took the attention off of the set backs.

Lunik II, the first man-made craft to land on the moon, launched by the USSR in 1959

During a 13-day trip to the United States in 1959, Soviet Primer Khrushchev presented American President Dwight Eisenhower with a metallic ball-like object that Khrushchev repeatedly referred to as a pennate. The day before the primer meet with the president, a soviet spacecraft called Lunik II smashed into the moon traveling 75,000 miles (or 121,000 kilometers) per hour. In so doing, Lunik became the first human-built object to leave earth and land on another celestial body. Lunik II carried the original object that Eisenhower had been presented a replica of. Sure the craft and the so-called pennate likely disintegrated on impact, traveling as fast as it was. It was still a first that was another feather in the cap of the Soviet space program. By calling the object a pennate, Khrushchev could imply to the world that the Soviet Union had planted its flag on the moon. During the two weeks Khrushchev was visiting the US, the US space program had three Atlas rockets explode during test launches.

A replica of the "pennate" carried by Lunik II to the moon, presented to Eisenhower by Khrushchev in person, the day after the historic touchdown on the lunar surface

Hoping to boost the moral of the US public and the US space program, the United States tried to launch a satellite and put it in orbit of the moon in time for the start of the third year of the space race - specifically the second anniversary of the Sputnik launch. They failed. The USSR did not fail in its amazing engineering feat to commemorate the event. Using the spacecraft Lunik III, the Soviets sent a camera to the far side - the dark side - of the moon, a place never before seen. Not only did they manage to take photos, but they managed to transmit them back to earth. The poor-quality photos themselves are not overly impressive, but the engineering needed to successfully mount such a mission is amazing.