How the Soviet Union stormed Mars, created and landed the world's first ski rover on the Red Planet

More than 50 years have passed since the first spacecraft in the history of mankind, which was produced by the forces of engineers from the USSR, reached the surface of the Red Planet. It was "Mars-2" - a Soviet vehicle, on board of which was placed the first-ever Mars rover, the ProP-M (a device for assessing the passability - Mars).

The task of the first rover was to measure the density of the soil, as well as the lander in the transmission of the first images of the surface of the Red Planet. This historical event will be discussed in the current material.

What is he like, the first rover in history

As the practice of space flights shows, it turned out to be much easier to fly to Mars than to land a descent vehicle on its surface.

It's all about the highly thinned atmosphere of the planet. And the world's first mission to Mars was complicated by the fact that it was during the arrival of the spacecraft to the planet that a strong storm broke out on its surface, which lasted no small 5 months.

The start of the USSR mission to explore Mars took place in May 1971, when two stations were launched at once. So on May 19, 1971, the Proton-K rocket was launched, on board which Mars-2 was located, and after only nine days from Baikonur, the Mars-3 AMS went to Mars.

Each rocket also carried a device that was very similar in size to a notebook - the first Mars rover ProP-M in the history of mankind.

The development of these devices over the course of a five-year period was carried out by specialists at that time of the Leningrad VNIITransmash. And the work was supervised by design engineer A. Kemurjian.

It was decided to equip the Mars-2 and Mars-3 spacecraft with a fundamentally new locomotion system. At that time, experts did not have the slightest idea about the surface of the Red Planet. It was suggested that the soil of Mars can be free-flowing, and on such a surface it is best to move on "skis".

At the same time, the first rover itself was small in size and had dimensions of 25 x 22 x 4 centimeters, weighing only 4.5 kilograms.

So, according to the idea of ​​scientists, such a device with "skis" will be able to move at a speed of 1 meter per hour. If an obstacle was detected, the device had to stop and wait for a command from specialists from the Earth. And so the planned stops had to occur every 1.5 meters to correct the future course.

Equipment and capabilities of ProP-M

So the first rover in history, it was decided to equip a pair of thin rods in the front, which played the role of obstacle fixation sensors. And with the help of these antennae-antennae, the device would be able to bypass the arising obstacles.

Of course, scientific instruments were also mounted on the apparatus: a dynamic density meter, as well as a gamma-ray density meter. The main task of the installed instruments is to determine both the density and the structure of the Martian soil.

This was the main task of the Soviet Mars rovers.

The control and monitoring of the devices were to be carried out through the lander, and the devices themselves were connected to the module using a fifteen meter cable.

Hard landings and first shots from the surface

Unfortunately, it was the dust storm that played out on the planet's surface that became the main reason for the failure of the Soviet Mars mission. So on November 27, 1971, during landing, the Mars-2 spacecraft crashed (this is the first object that reached the surface of the red planet).

And already on December 2, 1971, the Mars-3 station was still able to reach the surface. This was the first successful soft landing on another planet.

So, shortly after landing, the station moved into an operating position and, using a specialized module, unloaded ProP-M onto the Martian soil. In addition, the station began to transmit to Earth a panorama of the surrounding world of the Red Planet.

Much to the dismay of the specialists, the incoming image was a solid gray background, on which it was not possible to make out any distinguishable details. And after only 14.5 seconds, the signal was cut off, and communication with the module was lost forever.

Analyzing this episode, experts suggested that due to the same strong dust storm in the antennas the transmitter could have formed a corona discharge or the battery that supplied the entire installation.

But the mission cannot be considered completely a failure, because an orbital station remained in near the Martian orbit. A special research program was prepared for her, which lasted for eight months.

During this time, the installed sensors transmitted to the Earth infrared radiometry, photometry, as well as data on the composition of the atmosphere, the planet's magnetic field and plasma.

For a long time, the landing site of the Soviet vehicles remained unknown, and only thanks to the analysis of high-quality images, which was performed by V. Egorov (popularizer of astronautics and blogger), the landing site was discovered in the Martian crater of Ptolemy.

It was there that the first Soviet module in the history of mankind was planted, on which was the first Mars-3 rover, which never made a single "step" with its "skis" on the Martian surface.

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