Zond 6, a member of the Soviet Union's Zond program, was launched on a lunar flyby mission from a parent satellite (68-101B) in Earth parking orbit. The spacecraft, which carried scientific probes including cosmic ray and micrometeoroid detectors, photography equipment, and a biological payload, was a precursor to manned spaceflight. Zond 6 flew around the moon on November 14, 1968, at a minimum distance of 2420 km. Photographs of the lunar near side and far side were obtained with panchromatic film. Each photo was 5 in by 7 in (127.0 by 177.8 mm). Some of the views allowed for stereo pictures. The photos were taken from distances of approximately 11,000 km and 3300 km. Controlled reentry of the spacecraft occurred on November 17, 1968, and Zond 6 landed in a predetermined region of the Soviet Union. From http://www. ... From http://www. ... The name Zond (meaning probe in Russian) is the name given to two series of Soviet unmanned space missions from 1964 to 1970 to gather information about nearby planets and test spacecraft. ... Cosmic rays can loosely be defined as energetic particles originating outside of the Earth. ... A Micrometeoroid (also micrometeorite, micrometeor) is a tiny meteoroid; a small particle of rock from space, usually weighing less than a gram, that poses a threat to space exploration. ...
Launch Date/Time: 1968-11-10 at 19:11:31 UTC
On-orbit dry mass: 5375 kg
This article was originally based on material from NASA (NSSDC) information on Zond 6
Zonds 1 to 3 were 900-kg, Venera-class spacecraft sent to fly by Venus, Mars, and the Moon, respectively.
Zonds 4 to 8, by contrast, were much larger, 5-ton vehicles derived from the Soyuz Earth orbital craft which formed an early stage of the Soviet Unions L-1 project to send humans on circumlunar flight (see Russian manned Moon programs).
Zond 7 looped around the Moon, sent back the first color photographs of the Moon by a Soviet spacecraft, and executed a perfect entry and landing to become the first totally successful flight of the L-1 program.
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