Zond 5 Mission : 50 yrs ago first Gaians reached another world

The Peace of God to all that belong to the Light
Dear Readers

On September 14th to 22nd there was a Historic anniversary for the progress of science in particular and the achievemnts of Civilization in general.

In the same dates of the year 1968 the space space craft Zond 5 was launched from Baikonur cosmodrom in Kazakhstan, then orbited the moon carrying aboard the first creatures of our Earth that reached other world and brought them back alive.

Turtles, insects and plants carefully selected were able not only to live in absence of gravity orbiting our planet and natural satellite but also returned healthy from such an adventure and were able to breed afterwards.

Pls check

solarsystem.nasa.gov...

Zond 5, a version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 manned Moon-flyby spacecraft, was launched by a Proton-K carrier rocket with a Blok D upper stage to conduct scientific studies during its lunar flyby.

Zond 5 launched on September 14 also became the very first spacecraft to circle the Moon and return to land on Earth.

Pls check

www.russianspaceweb.com...


On September 18, the spacecraft flew around the Moon. The closest distance was 1,950 km. High-quality photographs of the Earth were taken at a distance of 90,000 km.

A biological payload of two Russian tortoises, wine flies, mealworms, plants, seeds, bacteria, and other living matter was included in the flight.


This was a meaningful achievement for the Soviet space program that together with the Historic manned flight of the Apollo 8 American mission of December 21st 1968 marked a trascendental move of our world toward new frontiers of expansion.

The thread is open to remember this important milestone for our History, a turning point in the biological evolution that made possible for life to reach intelligence and for the cultural ascent of Humanity.

Thanks for your attention

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

never heard of. thanks for posting!

originally posted by: The angel of light
...a turning point in the biological evolution that made possible for life to reach intelligence and for the cultural ascent of Humanity.

What biological evolution took place? What part of human culture 'ascended'? This sentence makes absolutely no sense.

a reply to: oloufo

Well, yes it is something so important for the ascent of humanity, a so much constructive achievement to remember and however it was practically ignored by a media more corcerned in to focus on real or artificial scandals that nothing positive can bring.

Our specie finally after thousands of years of civilization became able to send safely part of the earth's genoma to other world and bring it back to home alive.

The living payload of Zond 5 were the first creatures evolved in this planet to reach other point of the cosmos.

Thanks

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

Very interesting! Thank-you.

my arithmetic says 50 years not 40....



reply:

On September 18, the spacecraft flew around the Moon. The closest distance was 1,950 km.[...] A biological payload of two Russian tortoises, wine flies, mealworms, plants, seeds, bacteria, and other living matter was included in the flight.

this sounds like The Event was a Superstitious Ritual to me... orbiting a few live critters along with living organisms around a 'Sterile' Moon that is devoid of life or even organics at a distance from the surface which roughly corresponds to the Gregorian calendar Year = the 1960s era

This was a meaningful achievement for the Soviet space program that together with the Historic manned flight of the Apollo 8 American mission of December 21st 1968 marked a trascendental move of our world toward new frontiers of expansion.

the act of sending humans to previous uninhabited regions would indeed enlarge the metaphysical sphere-of-consciousness of humanity...but as with all previous advances of humanity in the various facets of living...only the spilling-of-blood (which includes the actual mingling of 'organics' with the previously 'sterile' soil) is the How-&-Why of Expanding the territory and presence of humanity...
the ritual Act of humanity mingling with the environment is the underlying principal, just sending a space capsule to orbit is not 'Planting a Flag' or any such higher level of evolutionary purpose in a Spiritual sense ~or in expanding the 'noosphere' thought to exist to unto the fartherest reaches of human habitation/consciousness...


a bit of levity was required, i thought

?

a reply to: St Udio

Excuse me, but insects or animals in particular and possibly plants apparently have intelligence, there are many studies about that, showing they react toward many stimuli smartly but even with respect to love or hatred.

Besides research made in the subject I believe anybody having pets, training animals or cultivating a garden has something to say about it.

Pls check

Intelligence of Animals, window for human Potential


It is of course Not at the same level of ours but there other creatures that certainly think, make their own decisions to survive, they avoid dangers and look for comform groups
, they can express their vital needs, orient themselves autonomously to what they require, even at the simple level of tropisms as occurs in plants.

intelligence of reptiles understand estimated

That may include to enjoy affection, other wise there wouldn't make any sense to have pets.

I don't see on the living payload of Zond 5 any ritual, other than great respect for all alive creatures, it was an interesting scientific experiment to test reactions of different forms life to such a trip.

Please check
The mind without a brain, the science of plants intelligence

The Angel of Lightness

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: The angel of light
...a turning point in the biological evolution that made possible for life to reach intelligence and for the cultural ascent of Humanity.

What biological evolution took place? What part of human culture 'ascended'? This sentence makes absolutely no sense.

Only way to know is If you go to space, fly around the moon, come back in one piece and breed.

What if E.T was watching and they have been trying to talk to the wrong animals ever since...….lol.

a reply to: The angel of light

This was the only successful mission of the ZOND (Probe) program

en.wikipedia.org...

Most of the attempts ended in failure do to problems with Proton booster

The mission before, ZOND 4, had a guidance failure during reentry which prevented the "double dip: reentry

The "double dip" had the landing module hit the atmosphere at an angle to aerobrake, skipping back into space before
reentering the atmosphere again for landing

Because of this experienced a ballistic uncontrolled re-entry . The craft would have landed outside Soviet territory
and the destruct package was detonated to destroy it

Think about it - Soviet spacecraft carrying explosive destruct packages to destroy it in order to prevent any secrets from
being revealed

The follow on mission. Zond 6, experienced a decompression which killed all the biologic specimens it carried

The parachutes failed to deploy and crashed

3 months after Zond 5, the USA launched Apollo 8 in December 1968 which orbited moon 20 times with 3 astronauts
before returning safely back to earth

Soviets launch capsule with some turtles and fungus on circum-lunar flyby vs launching 3 humans to orbit the moon and return

a reply to: firerescue

No, we can Not minimize what Zond 5 reached, that would be terribly simplistic and unfair, and the fact they overcome errors and disasters to reach success inspires only respect.

I don't think the best way to assume what occurred with Zond 5 is to try to approach it in the most negative way, there is No need to demonize any nation program, each team of scientists and Engineers worked hard and with devotion and deserve respect.

Each space program made their own important contribution to the progress of civilization, to give is a clear large picture of our corner of the Universe, of course the American one was focused into bring men to the moon.

The Soviet Space program , however, in its chapter of exploration of the moon achieved tremendous milistones, it is highly respectable in reached goals, Zond 5 was one of many:

- first human manufactured object to take close up pictures of the moon, including its permanently hidden face, its far side.

- first human manufactured object to reach its surphace, land on it and send signals from it.

- first Space Craft entering into orbit the moon and carry alive beings that returned safe.

- first robotic spacecrafts( also first of any kind) to land and able to collect samples of lunar soil, analize them and bring them back to earth .

- first mobile telecontroled robotic roover ( also first of any type of vehicle ) to run on the lunar surface and on the one of any other world or natural satellite of the solar system.

The USSR in its effort to explore the moon was Not a mediocre or an easy rival to try to surpass

Thanks for your reply,

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

Soviet space program was used as propaganda forum Purpose was to generate "firsts" to be exploited for propaganda
purposes

Often were crude "one off" designed to generate propaganda without clear scientific purpose

The first "soft" landing on moon was more of thump down where small package was ejected from main spacecraft just before impact . It bounced and rolled to stop - open up to expose camera , took dew pictures then died

USA Surveyors soft landed and took thousands of hi res pictures Soviets may have bee first, but accomplished little

The Zond, did not actually orbit moon, that was left to Apollo , It made a circumlunar flight -a figure 8 to moon and back

US had capacity to do such a mission 3 years before ZOND, but choose mot to because overriding purpose was to
]land men on moon before 1970 Such a mission would have been distraction and absorbed scare resources

a reply to: firerescue

Hi Dear firerescue,

Well, I can not endorse or expose your claim about that what Zond 5 did may have been done before by America if Nasa might want it, I think that enters in a very speculative territory, a realm of suppositions. History, specially of science and technology is written by the ones that are bold and try, not by the ones that decide to keep their best effort for later.

Now, both sides make political propaganda using their space achievements to try to convince others of the benefits of their own national political systems, they certainly did it and we also did it, our leaders used technology to support their political views as well.

The first man-made satellite to orbit the earth was named Sputnik. The first living creature in space was Laika. The first rocket to the Moon carried a red flag. The first photograph of the far side of the Moon was made with a Soviet camera. If a man orbits the earth this year his name will be Ivan. Senator John F. Kennedy 1958

We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations-explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon-if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there. President John F Kennedy 1961

please check:
www.nasa.gov...

You are quite right in the sense that Zond 5 didn't carried out orbits around the moon, they circumnavigate it very closely though without entering in permanent orbit.

Please check:

www.svengrahn.pp.se...

We must understand that the Space race was never carried out when the USSR was under the rule of the Marxist communist hardline side of their politics, those events didn't happened under Vladimir Lenin or Josef Stalin regimes.

The achievements of the Soviet space program where all done after the political reforms pushed by Nikita Khrushchev to humanize the political regime in that country, it was not the time of massive anti religious prosecutions, neither the one of millions of political prisoners in the gulag, or genocides by starvation of peasants, nor the time when ethnical minorities in the USSR were under represented and also discriminated.

The Khrushchev Thaw

Khrushev worked really hard in to try to achieve their own version of separation of powers and create a robust constitutional legal framework that prevented them to fall again in the terrible crimes of the Stalin era. He was responsible of a new agreement with the religious organizations to let them operate again openly and also he created the autonomous republics within the Confederate ones for principal ethnical minorities and also the Autonomous republics and national districts for the the smaller ones.

Now, what it was not achieved in to acquire civil rights on Khrushchev era it was in the years after him. There is a continuous line of liberalization from Khrushchev Thaw to The Soviet Constitution of 1977, that was the most moderate of the Soviet era, advancing at progressive pace in to return power to civilians, it was established the rights of the Confederated Republics to separate if they wanted and also it revived in some utilitarian way private property, not over capital means, but at least over certain goods of private use, like for instance furniture, electrodomestics, cars, city houses, country houses, bank accounts, real state in general.

Nikita Khrushev, who also accepted private investments in the USSR in underdeveloped economic sectors and transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine, as well as to have created Finnish minorities political entities in Russia, like the Autonomous Republics of Karelia, Komi and Mari-El, became the first Soviet leader that didn't die in power, and also that didn't choose his successors.

The peaceful disintegration of the USSR in many aspects was possible for the political reforms that preceded it, the constitution of 1977 No longer defined the USSR as the dictatorship of the Proletarian class but as the socialist agreement between different social classes, the workers, the peasants, the popular intellectuality and the Nomenclatura. Their popular intellectuality gave a formal social standard to all the scientists , engineers and professionals in general and defined actually their middle class, considering the their Political Nomenclatura was actually their high social class.

The Soviet Union made alone under their own internal pressure social changes that took China much longer to perform and achieve, considering that until Mao Tse Tung death they were really the last hard core Stalinist regime over the face of earth, but we preferred to negotiate with them than with the Russians.

Without a Nikita Khrushchev by sure there would not be any Mikhail Gorbachev in History, he ended with the monolithic conformation of their only political party and embraced the existence of diversity of factions on it. His role in Russian History is similar to the one of Deng XiaoPing in China but 30 years earlier.

I think what Zond 5 achieved tells us a lot of what is in common in the Human spirit in general, what makes all of us to belong to the same specie, sharing similar dreams and expectations.

Thanks for your reply,

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: This was the only successful mission of the ZOND (Probe) program firerescue

I think this is a reply that really deserve to be commented more throughly and be fully clarified.

I don't know what are your references, and I believe when something go into wikipedia, that is a link you brought, and there are important inconsistencies it must be reported, so I hope this should alert that something is wrong on such data, it is misinforming terribly about the level of accidents or failures on the Soviet Space program

It is true that there were various launchings of the Zond program that didn't work well, with really negative consequences, but even in the ones the mission was aborted few minutes after it was started the rate of recovery of the actual Capsules was higher than the losses. The issue were not the spacecrafts but the change of the original rocket carrier Molniya for the recently designed Proton that clearly was not yet really fully tested for such a mission.

The program began with good momentum, the first three launchings Not yet using Soyuz spacecrafts but Venera type robotic ones were pretty successful and were intended to explore different other worlds:

Zond 1
Launched 2 April 1964
Communications lost 14 May 1964
Venus flyby 14 July 1964

Zond 2
Launched 30 November 1964
Communications lost May 1965
Mars flyby 6 August 1965

Zond 3
Launched 18 July 1965
Lunar Flyby 20 July 1965

Now, there were two successful missions for testing the Soyuz 7K-L1/L1S vehicles:

Cosmos 146
Launched 10 March 1967
Prototype Soyuz 7K-L1P launched by Proton into planned highly elliptical earth orbit.

Cosmos 154
Launched 8 April 1967
Prototype Soyuz 7K-L1P launched by Proton and failed to go into planned translunar trajectory.

Now, there were three missions after the Zond 5 that were successful into reach the lunar flyby for which they were intended:

Zond 6
Launched 10 November 1968
Circumlunar 14 November 1968
Returned to Earth 17 November 1968

(You are right, although it had success into develop the circumlunar trajectory, taking photos of the moon unfortunately a failure of last moment not on the reentry but on the parachutes provoked the crash of the capsule killing the biological payload on it. )

please check:

solarsystem.nasa.gov...

solarviews.com...

Zond 1969A
Launched 20 January 1969
Stage two shutdown 25 seconds early. Automatic flight abort. Capsule was safely recovered.
Attempted Lunar flyby


Zond 7
Launched 7 August 1969
Lunar flyby 11 August 1969
Returned to Earth 14 August 1969

Zond 8
Launched 20 October 1970
Lunar flyby 24 October 1970
Returned to Earth 27 October 1970

I think you read the wrong page on Wikipedia to prepare your post, since this information is even posted on other of their pages:

Zond Soviet Space Program

Here other important online references that can be checked for the ones interested into verify technical details:

www.daviddarling.info...


The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

The ZOND 4 and 5 mission was responsible in some part for the decision to send Apollo 8 on a lunar orbital mission in December 1968

The "double dip" or "skip reentry" practiced on these missions combined with a photo released of the ZOND 4
spacecraft

British Interplanetary Society member Charles Vick spotted the existence of a launch escape tower in the picture

The presence of the launch escape tower and "double dip" re entry confirmed that a manned mission was planned

The success of the ZOND 5 in September 1968 seemed to confirm that a manned circum lunar mission would soon follpe

The launch window would open up on December 12 for the Baikonur. followed by a week later for Cape Canaveral

That the Lunar Module (LEM) was late and not be ready until spring 1969 forced NASA to reschedule the missions

After success of Apollo 7 in earth orbit Simply sending Apollo 8 on another earth orbital mission seemed redundant

The added pressure of Soviets stealing another space first help force the decision to go for the moon

Failure of Zond 6 in November put off a manned attempt until problems identified and fixed

It wasn't until August 1969 that successful Zond mission flown - by that time Apollo 11 had landed on moon rendering
a manned mission mote.

Naw, we're not Gaians.......gaia is a creation.....maybe alive yes......the cedars of Lebanon complained to God about man having iron........to make an axe

Cool thread but let's talk the Soviet mars shot that got swallowed by a giant shadow.....live on video stills

a reply to: GBP/JPY

Well, Earthling ,Terrestrial, Terran, or Gaian anyway we are all children of this planet in first instance, since without it we should not even have a way to exist, the planet host us and many other species that even appeared on it before us and for that reason we must consider it specially as our common mother and they as our elder brothers.

Now, Zond 5 was in essence a modern version of the legendary Noah Arc, carrying different terrestrial species to another world, so it has also a respectful connection with legends, myths or ancient traditions that shaped the Western Civilization.

If we check carefully the chronology of the Zond program the first mission actually was a modified Venera Spacecraft that went in to Venus, and that was an outstanding achievement, even considering that Mars was an elusive target to land on for the Soviet Space technology.

Venus was in many aspects a more logical destination than mars since it was the closest to our planet, almost its twin in size too, and closer to the sun and also it is a world that actually have atmosphere, of course pretty dense and also not very friendly with life as we know it.

please check:
www.universetoday.com...

Zond 1 was on April of 1964 not really the first spacecraft in to circumnavigate Venus, but the second one, it was preceded by the Venera 1 of February 1961, first one to carried out a successful flyby to that planet. There were also subsequent other missions on flyby even at the highest stratus of the Venusian atmosphere, Veneras 2,3,4, before to be able to land successfully on a very hostile planet by the way, with an atmosphere of several times the pressure we have here on earth.

It was Venera 7 the very first to land on another world of similar dimensions to ours, not just our natural satellite and it was just a little more than a year after Apollo 12 , second American mission that arrived successfully to the moon surface, on December of 1970.

Please check:
coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu...

Now , taking about mars Zond 2 was able to do a successful flyby over the red planet, on early December of 1964, and still remains as a milestone, competing with Mariner 4 in to be the first Terran spacecraft in to approach that world.

Venera Soviet exploration of Venus Program

The real issue to measure or verify the success of the Soviet missions of this specific period is that some of them lost communications even before to reach their targets.

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

Zond 1 was on April of 1964 not really the first spacecraft in to circumnavigate Venus, but the second one, it was preceded by the Venera 1 of February 1961, first one to carried out a successful flyby to that planet

One little problem ……….

Venera I communications failed 1 week into mission when 1.2 million miles from earth

Same thing with Mar 1 probe - lost contact on way

Also Zond 1 was not second spacecraft to fly past Venus, but third after Mariner 2 (December 1962) Mariner 1 wound up in drink (Atlantic) after range safety destroyed Atlas booster because of guidance failure

a reply to: The angel of light

What able first probe to reach interstellar space ?

VOYAGER 2 is about to cross this boundary soon

www.engadget.com...

Its sister probe YOYAGER 1 is believed to crossed over in 2012

The problem with defining interstellar space is that is not hard boundary . Depends on solar activity , usually
defined as increase in extra solar count of cosmic ray particles coming from deep space

a reply to: firerescue

Indeed the mutual pressure on that stage of the Space race made a very important weight over the progress of the other part to improve what it was not yet fixed and dare to try to push farther in to reach the goal, and I believe that was one of the most important benefits of to have had a rival of quality challenging our performance with their own achievements.

I am sure they also consider our competition against them a very important factor to have moved them to reach in a bold manner more than probably what they have achieved acting alone.

Competition is vital to increase standards of quality in what ever is done on life.

The Angel of Lightness