The Flight
Luna 1 was launched 2 January 1959 at 16:41 GMT (19:41 Moscow Time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by a Luna 8K72 rocket.
Luna 1 became the first ever man-made object to reach the escape velocity of the Earth (what is also known as the second cosmic velocity), when it separated from its 1472 kg third stage. The third stage, 5.2 m long and 2.4 m in diameter, traveled along with Luna 1. On 3 January, 3:56:20 Moscow Time, at a distance of 119,500 km from Earth, a large (1 kg) cloud of sodium gas was released by the spacecraft, thus making this probe also the first artificial comet. This glowing orange trail of gas, visible over the Indian Ocean with the brightness of a sixth-magnitude star for a few minutes, was photographed by Mstislav Gnevyshev at the Mountain Station of the Main Astronomical Observatory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR near Kislovodsk. It served as an experiment on the behavior of gas in outer space. Luna 1 passed within 5995 km of the Moon's surface on 4 January after 34 hours of flight. It went into orbit around the Sun, between the orbits of Earth and Mars.
Read more about this topic: Luna 1
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.”
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948)