1959-012A
On the fourth launch, on Jan 2, 1959, the R-7 core worked correctly and the Blok-E got its first chance to fire. It operated successfully except for a control system malfunction. The final Blok-E stage and the E-1 No. 4 probe were placed in solar orbit, missing the Moon by 6000 km on Jan 4.
At the time there was no official name for the probe, just 'scientific instrument container of the Soviet Cosmic Rocket'. By the early 1960s it was referred to as the AMS `Luna' ( Avtomaticheskaya Mezhplanetaya Stantsiya `Luna') (known today as Luna-1), the probe was also referred to as `Mechta', reflecting the achievement of Tsiolkovskiy's `dream'. The probe carried detectors to measure the space environment; the 0.8 m diameter sphere had a mass of 205 kg (the often quoted mass of 361 kg includes a power supply attached to the final stage; possibly the sodium cloud experiment must also be subtracted). The probe stopped transmitting on Jan 5.
| AMS Luna | |||
| Date | Time | Event | Orbit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 Jan 2 | 1641:25 | Launch by 8K72 | KB |
| 1646? | Blok-A sep | ||
| 1646? | Blok-E burn | ||
| Fairing sep? | |||
| 1652:10 | T+11:45 Escape velocity | ||
| 1959 Jan 4 | 0259 | Perilune 6000 km, ahead of Moon | |
| 1959 Jan 5 | End of transmissions | ||
| 1959 Jan 14 | Perihelion | 146M x 197M km x 1.0 deg | |
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