by Vladimir YEFANOV, Dr. Sc. (Tech.), Deputy Director for Science of the Experimental Design Bureau, Maxim MARTYNOV, Cand. Sc. (Tech.), Deputy Chief Designer, Head of the Experimental Design Bureau, Konstantin PICHKHADZE, Dr. Sc. (Tech.), First Deputy Chief Designer, First Deputy Director General of the Scientific and Production Association named after S. Lavochkin (Moscow) Fundamental space science originated over 50 years ago. For this short historical period, a multitude of discoveries were made. This breakthrough became a reality after the launch of scientific instruments beyond the limits of the Earth and its gravitation field using automatic space vehicles. The starting point of the research works under consideration is the year 1957. The third artificial satellite of the Earth launched on May 15, 1958, already had relevant scientific instruments installed on board. This line of research experienced a substantial development in 1965, when an automatic station Luna-9 designed by joint efforts of the Rocket and Space Corporation Energiya and the Scientific and Production Association named after S. Lavochkin (then Experimental Design Bureau-1 and Mechanical Engineering Plant named after S. Lavochkin) successfully landed on the natural Earth satellite. All previous launches of robots to the Moon, Mars and Venus accomplished set missions only partially due to faults of boost rockets or on-board equipment. In 1965, our enterprise took the lead in designing of automatic space machinery for стр. 4 fundamental research (before that we had successfully designed aircraft and rocket vehicles). FROM LUNA-16 TO GRANAT In the second half of the last century, we designed space vehicles that brought our country to the forefront in some areas of scientific research. Here are some of them: Luna-16--delivery of the lunar soil to the Earth in an automatic regime; Luna-17--a. mobile research laboratory Lunokhod-1; Venera-7 and Mars-3 succes ... Читать далее