Now available on line in The Space Review are “If at first you don’t succeed – Part One” and “Part Two” which recount the history of the Soviet Union’s attempts to launch automated probes to Venus and Mars in 1962. Learning from the failures of their Object 1M probes to Mars in launched in October 1960 (see “The First Mars Mission Attempts“) and Object 1VA launched in February 1961, Chief Designer Sergei Korolev and his team at OKB-1 designed and built the improved Object 2MV. The one-ton 2MV spacecraft series consisted of a standard spacecraft bus called an “orbital compartment” that was fitted with an interchangeable module called a “planetary compartment” whose design was geared towards a specific target and mission. One version carried cameras and other sensors designed to observe the target planet during a close flyby. The second type was a lander designed to detach from the orbital compartment before encounter and touchdown on the surface of Venus or Mars years ahead of NASA’s most ambitious plans of the time.
A Russian diagram of the 2MV-4 spacecraft like Mars 1. Click on image to enlarge. (RKK Energia)
A total of a half dozen 2MV spacecraft were launched towards Venus and Mars during back-to-back launch windows in the fall of 1962. But continued problems with the Soviet’s new 8K78 Molniya launch vehicle doomed all but one of the probes. And because of the Cuban missile crises in late October 1962, the last two Mars probes almost did not make it off the ground at all since they used the same pads and facilities as the Soviet R-7A ICBM (upon which the Molniya was based) which were placed on alert during the height of the crisis. Only Mars 1 launched on November 1, 1962 after a three-day delay managed to survive the ordeal of launch (which also claimed half of America’s first probes to Venus and Mars in these early years). Unfortunately Mars 1 succumbed to a series of problems during the then record-long 230-day trip to Mars and flew silently past the Red Planet on June 19, 1963. After the failure of the 2MV missions, Korolev began development of the improved Object 3MV which will be the topic of future articles in The Space Review as well as posts on this web site (a page with currently available articles on the 3MV series can be found here).
“If At First You Don’t Succeed… Part I”, The Space Review, Article #2477, March 24, 2014 [Article]
“If At First You Don’t Succeed… Part II”, The Space Review, Article #2480, March 31, 2014 [Article]
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Related Reading
“Trajectory Analysis of the 1962 Soviet Mars Missions”, Drew Ex Machina, May 2, 2014 [Post]
“Trajectory Analysis of the 1962 Soviet Venus Missions”, Drew Ex Machina, June 4, 2014 [Post]
“The First Mars Mission Attempts”, Drew Ex Machina, October 10, 2015 [Post]