Mars 1M No.2, designated ''Mars 1960B'' by NASA analysts and dubbed ''Marsnik 2'' by the Western media, was a

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...

launched as part of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Mars program The Mars program was a series of uncrewed spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1973. The spacecraft were intended to exploration of Mars, explore Mars, and included planetary flyby, flyby probes, Lander (spacecraft), landers an ...

me, which was lost in a launch failure in 1960. 1M No.2, which was intended to explore Mars from flyby trajectory, was destroyed after its Molniya carrier rocket failed to achieve orbit.

Launch

Mars 1M No.2 was the second Mars 1M spacecraft to be launched, lifting off four days after its sister craft, Mars 1M No.1, had been lost during the Molniya 8K78 rocket's maiden flight. 1M No.2 was carried by another Molniya, which had the

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

L1-5M. The launch took place from Site 1/5 at the

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

, with liftoff occurring at 13:51:03 UTC on 14 October 1960. During preparations for the launch, an oxidiser leak in the second stage caused

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear cyan liquid form of dioxygen . It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which is ongoing. Physical ...

, at cryogenic temperature, to spill around the engine's fuel inlet valve. This froze the stage's

RP-1 RP-1 (Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) and similar fuels like RG-1 and T-1 are highly refined kerosene formulations used as rocket fuel. Liquid-fueled rockets that use RP-1 as fuel are known as kerolox rockets. In their engines, RP- ...

propellant, leaving the engine unable to ignite. As a result, the spacecraft failed to achieve Earth orbit.

Scientific Instruments

The spacecraft carried three scientific instruments in order to investigate Mars.Siddiqi, A. A., & Launius, R. (2002)
Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and Planetary Probes 1958-2000
They are as follows *

Ultraviolet Ultraviolet radiation, also known as simply UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight and constitutes about 10% of ...

Spectrometer * Radiation Detector * Cosmic-ray Detector

References

1960 in the Soviet Union Spacecraft launched in 1960 Satellite launch failures Mars program Space accidents and incidents in the Soviet Union {{USSR-spacecraft-stub

Launch

Scientific Instruments

See also

References