Zond 4

Zond 4, a member of the Soviet Zond program, was a short flight that was one of the first Soviet experiments towards manned lunar spaceflight. It was designed to test the space-worthiness of the new capsule and to gather data about flights in circumterrestrial space. It was deliberately launched away from the moon either to avoid trajectory complications from its gravitational pull, or, according to NASA, probably unintentionally. [http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1968-013A]

After launching on March 2, 1968, it reached 300,000 km before coming back down. Operators attempted to bring it in with a skip reentry, but they made the angle too steep and it ended up plunging into the atmosphere early over West Africa. When the spacecraft reached an altitude of 10 km, a self-destruct mechanism was detonated by Ground control, destroying the spacecraft over the Gulf of Guinea.

External references

* [http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1968-013A NASA (NSSDC) information on Zond 4]

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