Luna 4

Luna 4 (also called Lunik 4 or Object 00566 ) was the first Soviet probe of second generation for the lunar program.

Instead of following a direct trajectory towards the the Moon like these predecessors, it was placed in terrestrial orbit then the automatic probe was injected on a lunar trajectory. The probe reaches the desired trajectory but passed very close to the Moon of 8 336,2 km on April 5th, 1963 with 13:25 (UTC) for then describing an terrestrial orbit (90 000 X 700 000 km). The initial mission of the probe is not known. One can suppose that the probe was to be posed on the lunar ground to carry out experiments there to be judged some by the selected trajectory and the attempts at landing of the following missions Luna 5 and Luna 6. This assumption is also based on the cancellation of the radio program Moscow Atteindre the Moon initially programmed on April 5th at the evening. The probe continued to emit on a channel of 183.6 MHz at least until April 6th.

Characteristics mission

Country: Union of the Soviet socialist republics
Launch date: April 2nd 1963 with 08:04 min 00s (UTC)

Site of launching: Tyuratam, Cosmodrome de Baïkonour (Kazakhstan)
Launcher: SS-6 (Sapwood) modified with an upper floor of second generation + stage of release

Mass: 1422 kg

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