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Ironically, film from captured balloons was of such quality that it was used by the Soviets to take pictures of the far side of the moon: https://www.damnintere
by mariuolo 9y ago
Ironically, film from captured balloons was of such quality that it was used by the Soviets to take pictures of the far side of the moon: https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side .
- orbital-decay 9y agoInteresting. Not trying to say it's not possible, but are there any sources on that other than the article calling Luna probes "Luniks"? I've never heard this story despite reading quite a lot about the soviet space program. I see a lot of speculations on this story on the net without citing the original source, some are even claiming that Luna-3 engineers kept the use of this film in secret from the designers, which is absolutely impossible. Seems a lot like a typical urban legend from after the fall of USSR...
- new299 9y agoFrom what I can tell, the original source is mentioned here: http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html (V. Efimov, Novosti Kosmonavtiki, August 2000.) It appears to be a Russian language magazine (and/or website), possibly this: http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/ http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/
- orbital-decay 9y agoThanks, yes it's NK and it's quite a reputable magazine which is seldom wrong, they usually have a lot of first-hand details from archives and industry sources. I was a bit sceptical about this because any intel was in KGB/GRU hands, and they generally weren't ready to share anything with anyone, even with people working on the space program (according to Boris Chertok and many others); everything was top secret.