Science: Moon Blow

The three-quarter moon rose over Europe last week as serene and remote as ever, but dropping faster and faster through its gravitational field was a small, alien object: a metal sphere blazoned with the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. Perhaps no one will ever know what happened when it hit. It may have dug an invisibly small crater among the natural meteor craters on the moon’s scarred face. Perhaps it splashed a brief fountain of dust. Whatever it did, the moon could no longer serve as a symbol of unreachability. Man had sent an object from the earth and pitted its virgin surface.

First news of the hit came to the free world from the radio telescope at Britain’s Jodrell Bank. As the moon rose, the great 250-ft. dish swung toward it. The sharp beep-beep of Lunik II throbbed in the control room. The signals were coming from the exact point in the starry sky that the Russians had predicted by telegram to Jodrell Bank.

At or Toward. The Russians called their shot carefully. They did not give its exact moment of launching and delayed first announcement long enough to permit a fairly accurate forecast of the rocket’s trajectory. As a hedge they used the Russian preposition k (pronounced “kuh”), which means both to and toward. Thus they might have been shooting either at or toward the moon. The final payload, they said, was a sphere weighing 859.8 lbs. and carefully sterilized to avoid contaminating the moon. It was slightly heavier than the payload of Lunik I that missed the moon on Jan. 3, 1959 and soared on into a solar orbit.

At 9:39 p.m. Moscow time, the Lunik emitted a cloud of sodium vapor. It was too low in the east for good observation in Western Europe, but several Soviet observatories reported seeing it. The cloud gave an accurate check of the course, and presently the Russians announced that Lunik II would actually hit the moon at 12:05 a.m. on Monday Moscow time (5:05 p.m. E.D.T. Sunday).

Target: Tranquillity. The Russians gave precise information about Lunik’s radios, which were transmitting on seven different frequencies. Signals were received briefly in San Francisco and in Japan, then faded out as moon and Lunik disappeared behind the earth. By this time the Russians had time to line up their figures. They announced officially that Lunik II would reach the moon four minutes ahead of schedule: at 5:01 E.D.T. They also predicted boldly that it would hit in the region between the Sea of Tranquillity, the Sea of Serenity and the Sea of Vapors. The way to tell that it had hit, they said, would be to hear its radio signals stop.

The world waited; crowds gathered in the streets of Moscow to watch the moon sailing coldly overhead. U.S. radio receivers were on the wrong side of the earth, but at Jodrell Bank the beeping continued while the moon climbed higher. As the predicted moment approached, the beeps wavered slightly. Then they stopped. In Moscow the radio stopped its program for an announcement. After an unexplained delay (perhaps for rechecking), the radio played a few bars of the International and the announcer said: “At 00:02:24 Moscow time [5:02:24 E.D.T.] the second Soviet cosmic rocket reached the surface of the moon.”

It was a triumphant end for Lunik II: after crossing nearly one-quarter million miles of space, it crashed on the moon less than 1½ minutes behind schedule. Admitted Jodrell Bank’s Director Lovell: “Simply astonishing, and the mind just boggles. The tracking information the Russians gave us proved so precise that I would not be surprised at all if the rocket was not now exactly where they said it would land—in the Sea of Tranquillity.”