Luna E-1 No.1, sometimes identified by NASA as Luna 1958A, was a

Soviet 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 ...

Luna E-1 spacecraft which was intended to impact the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

. It did not accomplish this objective as it was lost in a launch failure. It was the first of four E-1 missions to be launched. Luna E-1 No.1 was a spacecraft which marked the first Soviet attempt to send a spacecraft to the Moon. It was also the first mission of the

Luna programme The Luna programme (from the Russian word "Moon, Luna" meaning "Moon"), occasionally called ''Lunik'' by western media, was a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1976. The programme acc ...

. The spacecraft was intended to release of

sodium Sodium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Na (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 element, group 1 of the peri ...

, in order to create a "comet" of the metal which could be observed from Earth, allowing the spacecraft to be tracked. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted lunar impact mission. Chief Designer

Sergei Korolev Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (14 January 1966) was the lead Soviet Aerospace engineering, rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He invented the R-7 Sem ...

's ambitious space plans were being continually frustrated by design changes to the R-7 missile, launch failures, and the fact that the

ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range (aeronautics), range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads). Conven ...

program took priority. On 10 July 1958, a partial test version of the Luna 8K72 was launched without the Blok E upper stage but with the core and strap-ons of the 8K72 which had thicker-gauge tank walls and the AVD malfunction detection system. Almost immediately at liftoff, the Blok D strap-on suffered an engine malfunction and broke off the booster, impacting on the pad and exploding. The rest of the vehicle crashed a few hundred feet away. This accident, which caused considerable damage to Site 1/5, was traced to high frequency combustion instability in the strap-on RD-107 engines, something that would become a persistent problem on R-7 launches over the next two years. Since the first Luna probe was scheduled for launch in a month, repairs on the pad were done at breakneck speed. As Korolev knew that the United States was planning to launch a lunar probe on 17 August 1958, he faced considerable pressure getting the Luna and its booster ready for launch. Despite a number of technical issues, the pad crews managed to get the booster ready on the 17 August 1958, but Korolev instead decided to let the US flight go first on the reasoning that the Luna probe had a shorter trajectory to travel and would reach the Moon first. After that launch ended in a booster explosion, he decided to postpone the flight until the glitches with the 8K72 and Luna could be worked out. Luna E-1 No.1 was launched on 23 September 1958 atop a

Luna Luna commonly refers to: * Earth's Moon, named "Luna" in Latin, Spanish and other languages * Luna (goddess) In Sabine and ancient Roman religion and myth, Luna is the divine embodiment of the Moon (Latin ''Lūna'' ). She is often presented as t ...

8K72

carrier rocket A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistag ...

, flying 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 ...

. The booster lifted and flew until T+92 seconds when it suddenly exploded. This failure was traced to the resonant vibration issue that occurred on Sputnik 3 last spring and thought corrected, but the addition of the Blok E stage increased the length of the booster and moved its center of gravity. As the strap-on propellant tanks began emptying near the end of their burn, increased vibration began to shake them until it finally ruptured the propellant feed lines and caused an explosion.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luna E-1 No.1 Luna programme Spacecraft launched in 1958 Space missions that ended in failure