First To The Moon

A. A. Siddiqi. (1998), JBIS, 51, pp.231-238

Refcode: 1998.51.231

Abstract:

The Soviet Union was the first nation to send probes into deep space, achieving three of the most important ‘firsts’ in the history of space exploration, i.e. the first spacecraft to reach escape velocity; the first artificial object to reach the surface of another celestial body, and the first spacecraft to take pictures of the farside of the Moon. As with all other Soviet space projects of the time, only successes were announced in public. In recent years, the flood of information on early Soviet space programmes has allowed historians to rewrite the ‘·official history” of their early space achievements. Certainly the most important progenitor of the early Soviet space effort was Chief Designer Sergey P. Korolev of the Experimental Design Bureau No. 1 (OKB- 1) based in Kaliningard (now called Korolev) near Moscow. Along with his old comrade-in-arms Mikhail K. Tikhonravov at the Scientific Research Institute No. 4 (N11 -4), Korolev was the personal force behind the emergence and spectacular successes of the Soviet space programme in the late 1950s and early 1960s.