The Soviet's Secret Mars Landing

over 50 years ago a spaceship was lost on the planet Mars after Vanishing into a giant dust storm the probe transmitted just one brief message home to Moscow in the heart of the old Soviet Union all we know is that it sent back one mysterious scrambled image of the Martian landscape and then when silent Forever This is Russia's secret Landing on Mars when we talk about the space race of the 1960s the conversation is typically dominated by the moon and the first human Landing but there was a much more secretive race going on to make the first scientific discoveries about the planet Mars up until this time we knew virtually nothing about our closest planetary neighbor there were still very well-regarded theories that Mars was home to thriving plant and animal life even artificial canals of running water created by an intelligent and industrious Martian population there was no way to know for sure until we went there and investigated the planet up close with our own instruments between the years 1960 and 1969 there were 12 attempted missions to Mars eight by the Soviet Union and four from the USA of these three of them actually made it to the red planet in intact and functioning all were American the Soviet Union took a commanding early lead in the Space Race they were the first to deploy a satellite into orbit the first to send a human being into space and their Luna probes were the first to reach the surface of the Moon making the first ever flyby and close-up examination of Mars would have been another resounding wind for the Soviets but this is where the Space Race started to take a turn towards America's f after two failed attempts in 1960 the Soviets came agonizingly close to success in 1962 with a deep space probe known as Mars 1 it was not their first attempt to reach Mars but the Soviet government had a bad habit of just pretending like failed missions never happened and renaming them to something else so that they could try again this particular version of Mars 1 actually made it beyond the Earth's orbit and was heading triumphantly for a flyby of Mars that would take it within 11,000 km of the surface everything was looking great for about 4 months until when at a distance of 106 million km away from Earth the probe went silent and it was never heard from Again by the mid-60s NASA had established their lead in space exploration with Mariner 4 in July 1965 this probe made the first close flyby of Mars at just over 6,000 km of above the surface Mariner 4 recorded the first detailed photographs of the Martian landscape which was amazing for the time but unfortunately what those photos revealed was a dead cratered world that looked pretty much the same as our own Moon just more red no forests no canals no signs of life at all so that was a bit of a buzz kill but it obviously was not the end of our fascination with Mars we all know that NASA landed on the moon in the summer of 1969 and cemented their victory in the Space Race but the Soviets had one final Hail Mary play at greatness they were going to be the first to land on Mars 1971 was an important year for Mars exploration we know that the Earth and Mars come relatively close together in their orbits around the Sun once every 2 years or so but every 15 to 17 years we get an even closer alignment than usual between the two planets this is the event that both the American and Soviet space programs were eager to capitalize on the plan at Nasa was ambitious in its own right after completing successful flyby Maneuvers with Mariner 4 6 and 7 the Americans wanted to try for the first stable orbit around Mars from here they could make a long-term observation of the entire planet mapping its surface and examining the contents of its upper atmosphere this was key data that would be required for NASA's first attempt to to land over in the Soviet Union they had made the decision to skip ahead one step and go straight for a controlled landing on the Martian surface the plan was to send three missions in close succession the first would be a reconnaissance Orbiter called Mars 71s that would collect the same data that the Americans were looking for because without measuring the atmosphere and imaging the surface you'd essentially just be going in blind the Orbiter would be followed by twin land Vehicles known as Mars 2 and Mars 3 the idea was that Soviet Engineers would use data collected in orbit to update the landing profile on the fly in theory this was a genius idea in reality the Soviet Mars Orbiter failed in space due to a simple yet fatal programming error the fourth stage engine was supposed to fire at 1.5 hours into flight instead its internal timer was set for 150 hours this left it stuck permanently in Earth's orbit at which point the Soviets renamed the probe to Cosmos 419 and pretended that it was just another observation satellite and it was supposed to be there with their reconnaissance Orbiter dead in space Moscow made the decision to go ahead with the landing attempt knowing full well that they were going in blind meanwhile NASA was having moderate success with their own Mars Endeavors their first probe Mariner 8 failed at launch and ended up tumbling back down to earth instead of going to space but it's TN wi Orbiter Mariner 9 was much more successful Mariner 9 actually got out ahead of the Soviet Mission and became the first man-made vehicle to orbit Mars it settled into an elliptical orbit that brought the probe as close as 1,400 km to the Martian surface Mariner 9 brought six onboard scientific instruments including a visual Imaging system with a resolution of 98 m per pixel which was an increase from 790 m per pixel on previous Mars flybys This was 2 weeks before the arrival of the Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 Landers and of course the USA wasn't interested in Sharing any of their data from Mariner 9 they wouldn't even tell the Russians that a storm was coming Mars 2 and 3 were identical spacecraft each one consisting of an orbital module and a descent module the idea was that after dropping the Lander the newly lightened orbital module would fire an engine to slow down and raise itself into a able orbit of Mars where it could serve as a short-term observational satellite Mars 2 was the first to arrive the Soviets had little choice but to attempt an uncontrolled ballistic entry meaning that the Lander would hit the atmosphere at full speed like a bullet at which point we let fate Take the Wheel the final trajectory and Landing site will be determined by the forces of gravity atmospheric drag and the aerodynamics of the probe The Descent module had a 2.9 m diameter heat shield that would act as the primary Arrow braing system that should reduce the velocity down from around 6 km/s on Entry to just over 1 km/s or 3 and 1/2 times the speed of sound unfortunately for Mars 2 its descent module came in at too steep of an angle the onboard computer misinterpreted the data from the altimeter and the landing system was never deployed Mars 2 became the first man-made object to smash into the red Planet which is still an accomplishment Mars 3 arrives on December 2nd 1971 and the Soviets have had an opportunity to learn from their mistakes this time they nailed the angle of attack after being dropped from the Orbiter The Descent module spends 4 and 1/2 hours approaching the Martian atmosphere again the heat shield protects during entry and Begins the arrow breaking process as the vehicle falls down to the surface a radio altimeter is used to deter determin the speed of descent when it reaches terminal velocity of Mach 3.5 the supersonic parachutes are deployed now keep in mind this is the first time that a parachute has ever been used on Mars no one really knew what was going to happen least of all the Soviets but this time it works The Descent module is slowing down but with the thin Martian atmosphere it's not going to get slow enough so the module is equipped with gunpowder fueled retro Rockets that fire in the last seconds to bring the velocity down enough to release the landing capsule a few meters above the surface the Rockets push what's left of The Descent module and parachute away while the egg-like capsule falls to the surface its impact with the ground is pretty hard but the Lander is cushioned by a thick layer of foam this whole system with the arrow Shield the parachutes the Retro Rockets and the shock absorber is nearly identical to the method that NASA would use for all of their Mars Landings NASA got more sophisticated over time but the basic theory is the same and this was done by the Soviet Union in the year 1971 5 years before NASA landed on Mars after impacting the surface and coming to a rest the Mars 3 Landing capsule deployed four triangular pedals to self-right and expose its array of scientific instruments the Lander was equipped with a mass spectrometer to study atmospheric composition and sensors to measure temperature pressure and wind speed even a mechanical scoop to search the ground for organic materials and signs of life now just in case this wasn't impressive enough Mars I even carried its own mini Rover the prop M it was more like a small metal box just 21 cm long and 16 cm wide it weighed 4 and 1/2 kg the prop M didn't have wheels it used a pair of wide flat skis melted on arms that would allow it to step forward slowly the Rover was Tethered to the main Lander and a 15 M power cable and its purpose was to use a small onboard probe that measured the density of Martian soil again we can't stress enough that all of this stuff made it safely from Kazakhstan to the surface of Mars on the second attempt with practically zero existing knowledge of the Martian environment prior to launch in 1971 90 seconds after touchdown the the Mars 3 Lander had activated its systems and begun transmission back to Moscow for the Soviet Union this was a historic Victory which was quickly followed by a historic failure after just 14 seconds of transmission the signal from Mars went dead the only data that was received was this scrambled black and white image it was such a massive disappointment that the Soviets didn't even release the photo or tell anyone that they had landed on Mars the whole thing was considered to be yet another disappointment in what was becoming a long string of failures in space exploration the Mars Landing was largely kept secret for decades until the fall of the Soviet Union and the declassification of their records so what happened to Mars 3 well every 5 years or so the typical dust storms on Mars start to combine together until they form a single planet wide superstorm that engulfs the entire surface without the reconnaissance Orbiter to scout out the environment the Soviet Engineers back on Earth had no idea that their Landers were dropping in on Mars at the worst possible time it's not even a problem of wind because the atmosphere on Mars is so thin there is very little physical force exerted by the storm it's just the dust Martian dust is full full of extremely clingy electrostatic particles we know that now but the people building the Mars capsule Back in 1970 didn't so there was no protection against the dust it would have very quickly short circuited all of the exposed systems on the Lander and prevented it from accomplishing any scientific goals to add further insult to the situation the Mars 2 and 3 orbital modules which both managed to successfully achieve orbit around Mars were not able to return any useful photographs either because instead of capturing details of the Martian surface all they could see was the top of the planet wide dust storm meanwhile the significantly more well equipped Mariner 9 was able to wait out the storm and spent the next 3 months mapping out around 70% of the planet's landscape making historic new discoveries such as Olympus Mons the tallest mountain in the solar system as for the fate of the Mars 3 Lander in the early 2000s NASA released an ultra highresolution 1 billion pixel image from their Mars reconnaissance Orbiter based on the last known trajectory it was believed that the remains of the Soviet Lander were somewhere in the image in 2013 investigators identified what they believed to be the parachute heat shield and Lander on the Martian surface

Channel: The Space Race

Views: 548,730

Keywords: mars landing, abandoned mars lander, russia mars, soviet mars landing, russian mars landing, secret mars landing, secret mars mission, mars mission, nasa, cold war, nasa vs roscosmos, mars, soviet mars missions

Id: xltW2G60GCs

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 06 2024