Engineering Education “Today in History” Blog: First lunar space ship to escape Earth’s gravity
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (862) · January 2nd, 2013 · Add a Comment
Today in History – January 2, 1959 – the first lunar space ship shot to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. The unmanned Luna I was launched by the Soviet Union less than two years after their launch of Sputnik, the Earth’s first artificial satellite. Luna 1 passed to within 4,600 miles of the moon before moving on to a solar orbit.
Later in 1959 on September 14, the Soviets were successful in reaching the moon with the Luna 2. The Luna 2 spaceship fell out of the lunar sky and hit the ground near the Sea of Serenity. Although the ship itself was shattered, the mission was considered a success, making Luna 2 from the Soviet Union the first manmade object to “land” on the Moon. The U.S. lunar orbiters came next, followed by Japan’s Hiten spacecraft.
It does seem like a big waste, but crash landing was the main mode of landing for the next decade of moon landings. NASA’s series of Rangers in the 1960′s had five crashes, but were able to transmit the first detailed images of lunar craters, rocks and soil before being destroyed by the crash. These images beamed back to Earth provided information critical for the success of later Apollo missions.
Alas this means that the Moon has become a graveyard for old satellites and spaceships, including all five of NASA’s Lunar Orbiters (1966-1972), four Soviet Luna probes (1959-1965), two Apollo sub-satellites (1970-1971), Japan’s Hiten spacecraft (1993) and NASA’s Lunar Prospector (1999).
The Japanese were the third country that we know of on the moon. I find it interesting that their spacecraft was named the “Hiten” after the Buddhist flying angel, pictured below playing the flute in a sculpture by Okita Toshiki.
The first attempted soft landing wasn’t until May 1965 with the Soviet’s Lunar 5; but it failed and crashed in the Sea of Clouds area of the moon. The Luna 9 (center photo above) was successful a year later, transmitting data from the Ocean of Storms lunar area. Later in 1966, NASA’s Surveyor 1 (right photo) was the first soft-landed robotic laboratory, landing in the Ocean of Storms area.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s related resources on the Luna Missions and other lunar spacecraft. Or visit the Aerospace Engineering Education community site.
Also on this date in 1923 Thomas Midgley’s ethyl gasoline was first marketed. On this date in 1975 the U.S. Department of Interior designates the grizzly bear a threatened species in the Lower 48 States.
Tags: Aerospace Engineering · Engineering Mechanics · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Mechanical Engineering
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