Assorted Soviet Spacecraft Models

AN ASSORTMENT OF CUSTOM MADE MODELS OF IMPORTANT SPACECRAFT IN THE HISTORY OF SPACE EXPLORATION

Mars-3 was an unmanned space probe of the Soviet Mars program, which spanned from 1960-1973. Developed by the Lavochkin Design Bureau in Khimki, it was designed to study the surface of Mars both from orbit and on the lander, and was launched by a Proton-K rocket on 28 May 1971. After 6 months, on 2 December 1971, the probe became the first spacecraft to soft-land on the Martian surface. The data transmission to Earth lasted only 14.5 seconds before communications halted for reasons unknown. 

The Zond program refers to a series of Soviet uncrewed space missions that ran from 1964-1979 to gather information on our planetary neighbors and to test spacecraft systems for lunar exploration. The model included in this lot is a Soyuz 7k-L1 developed for circumlunar activity. Though four of the five Zond missions were plagued with malfunctions, the launch of Zond 5 in the fall of 1968 pressured NASA to fly Apollo 8 to the Moon in December 1968 and spurred the United States further in the space race.

The L3 lunar lander was meant to be used in the first Soviet crewed lunar landing. Originally scheduled to occur by the end of the 1960s pending the N1 rocket tests, lack of success with the N1 boosters meant that the L3 was never used and the United States beat the USSR to the Moon. This model is a testament to the extraordinary battle of engineering and innovation involved in the space race.

Vostok 1 carried the first human into space. Launched 1961 with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on board, Vostok 1 orbited the Earth once before reentering the atmosphere and landing in Kazakhstan, serving as a strong opening salvo by the USSR in the space race. There are two Vostok models included in this lot, one capsule model and one model of the Vostok spacecraft with the upper stage.

The Venera program involved a series of probes sent to study Venus, and established several important precedents in space exploration. Venera 3 was the first human-made object to enter the atmosphere of another planet in 1966. Venera 7 was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on another planet in 1970. In 1981, Venera 13 was the first spacecraft to record sounds on another planet.

The Phobos program was an unmanned space mission consisting of two probes launched by the Soviet Union to study Mars and its moons: Phobos and Deimos. Phobos 2 was launched on July 12, 1988, and entered orbit on January 29, 1989. It operated nominally throughout its cruise and Mars orbital insertion phases on January 29, 1989, gathering data on the Sun, the interplanetary medium, Mars, and Phobos. It investigated Mars’s surface and atmosphere, and returned 37 images of Phobos. Theories trying to explain the mysterious monolith on the Martian satellite had amassed over the years, with scientist Dr. Isaac Asimov even penning a story in which he suggests that Phobos was an abandoned alien ship from the distant past, captured by the gravity of the Red Planet.