HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.

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ACTIVE MISSIONS
   AstroSat    BurstCube
   CALET    Chandra
   Fermi    HXMT-Insight
   INTEGRAL    IXPE
   MAXI    NICER
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   /ART-XC
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PAST MISSIONS
   AGILE    ANS
   ARIEL V    ASCA
   BBXRT    BeppoSAX
   CGRO    COPERNICUS
   COS-B    DXS
   EINSTEIN    EUVE
   EXOSAT    GINGA
   GRANAT    HaloSat
   HAKUCHO    HEAO-1
   HEAO-3    HETE-2
   Hitomi    OSO-7
   OSO-8    ROSAT
   Rossi XTE    SAS-2
   SAS-3    Suzaku
   TENMA    UHURU
   VELA 5B     WASS
   XQC    

Luna 10 & Luna 12

photo of Luna satellite in a museum

* Mission Overview

Luna 10 was launched on 31 March 1966 and Luna 12 on 22 October 1966. They were the first Luna spacecraft intended to go into orbit around the moon, rather than soft or hard landing there. On 3 April 1966, Luna 10 was put into a selenocentric orbit -- becoming the moon's first man-made satellite. It had an apogee of 1015 km, a perigee of 350 km, an inclination to the equatorial plane of 72 degrees. The orbital time was 2 hours 58 minutes. The Luna 12 orbit was: apogee 1740 km, perigee 100 km, inclination 20 degrees, orbital time 3 hours 25 minutes. Both missions carried instrumentation to study the Moon and cislunar space. The instruments comprised a multichannel scintillation gamma-ray spectrometer intended to measure the moon's gamma- radiation. However, the Luna 10 and 12 spacecraft both measured the cosmic gamma-ray background during their flight to the moon.

* Instrumentation

Both satellites carried 40x40 mm NaI(Tl) scintillators. There was 32 channel energy resolution over the energy range 0.3-3.0 MeV. The detector aboard Luna 10 was housed inside the satellite and that of Luna 12 was outside.

* Science

A characteristic feature of the cosmic background spectra determined by both missions was an exponential decrease in the gamma-ray number with energy up to ~1.5 MeV, with a roughly flat spectrum above that energy.

The missions also fulfilled their primary intention, i.e. they returned much valuable data on the gamma-emissions from the lunar surface and rocks.

*Other information

  • Surkov, Exploration of Terrestrial Planets from Spacecraft, pp.182-193.
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Page authors: Lorella Angelini Jesse Allen
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Last modified: Thursday, 24-Sep-2020 17:37:05 EDT

HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.