Dark5 | 5 Unusual Pranks Pulled in Space @dark5tv | Uploaded 2 years ago | Updated 1 day ago
On September 18, 1968, United States intelligence picked up a signal from Zond 5, a Soviet lunar mission. The series of messages were strange, as the voices of cosmonauts Valery Bykovsky, Vitaly Sevastyanov, and Pavel Popovich could be heard speaking as if they were just about to land on the Moon!
The Americans felt they had underestimated the Soviets when they heard a voice say: "The flight is proceeding according to normal. We are approaching the surface..."
The CIA, NASA, and President Richard Nixon were horrified and did not know whether the USSR had just beaten them in the race to the Moon or if it was all a very cunning hoax.
In the end, it turned out to be a little of both.
In 1968, almost a decade had passed since the Soviets had taken the world by storm with the Sputnik launch. But their days of glory were behind, as NASA had grown strong and was already developing its Saturn V rocket.
Still, the USSR was not willing to give up so easily and developed two programs to land a man on the Moon. The first one was the N1, whose objective was to develop a rocket to land a single cosmonaut on the Moon, while the other was Zond or probe, which included two robotic spacecraft and planned to put two cosmonauts on circumlunar missions without a Moon landing.
After several failed launch attempts, the Soviets finally achieved partial success with Zond 4 in the early spring of 1968, and Zond 5 quickly followed.
For this launch, the Soviets decided to send two tortoises aboard the spacecraft to see how they would react to space prior to sending a human.
On September 15, 1968, Zond 5 successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and six days later, it made its way to Earth after accomplishing its mission.
While this occurred, the Soviets knew the Americans were tapping their communications, and cosmonaut Pavel Popovich decided to play with them a little.
According to Popovich: "When we realized we would never make it to the Moon, we decided to engage in a bit of hooliganism.
We asked our engineers to link the on-the-probe receiver to the transmitter with a jumper wire. Moon flight missions were then controlled from a command center in Yevpatoria, in Crimea.
When the probe was on its path around the Moon, I was at the center. So I took the mike and said: 'The flight is proceeding according to normal; we're approaching the surface…'"
The Americans bit the bait. Moments after that, President Nixon asked United States space advisor::"Why the hell is Popovich reporting from the moon?"
A month later, Borman visited the USSR, and the moment he spotted Popovich at the airport, he yelled: (Hey you, space hooligan!"
On September 18, 1968, United States intelligence picked up a signal from Zond 5, a Soviet lunar mission. The series of messages were strange, as the voices of cosmonauts Valery Bykovsky, Vitaly Sevastyanov, and Pavel Popovich could be heard speaking as if they were just about to land on the Moon!
The Americans felt they had underestimated the Soviets when they heard a voice say: "The flight is proceeding according to normal. We are approaching the surface..."
The CIA, NASA, and President Richard Nixon were horrified and did not know whether the USSR had just beaten them in the race to the Moon or if it was all a very cunning hoax.
In the end, it turned out to be a little of both.
In 1968, almost a decade had passed since the Soviets had taken the world by storm with the Sputnik launch. But their days of glory were behind, as NASA had grown strong and was already developing its Saturn V rocket.
Still, the USSR was not willing to give up so easily and developed two programs to land a man on the Moon. The first one was the N1, whose objective was to develop a rocket to land a single cosmonaut on the Moon, while the other was Zond or probe, which included two robotic spacecraft and planned to put two cosmonauts on circumlunar missions without a Moon landing.
After several failed launch attempts, the Soviets finally achieved partial success with Zond 4 in the early spring of 1968, and Zond 5 quickly followed.
For this launch, the Soviets decided to send two tortoises aboard the spacecraft to see how they would react to space prior to sending a human.
On September 15, 1968, Zond 5 successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and six days later, it made its way to Earth after accomplishing its mission.
While this occurred, the Soviets knew the Americans were tapping their communications, and cosmonaut Pavel Popovich decided to play with them a little.
According to Popovich: "When we realized we would never make it to the Moon, we decided to engage in a bit of hooliganism.
We asked our engineers to link the on-the-probe receiver to the transmitter with a jumper wire. Moon flight missions were then controlled from a command center in Yevpatoria, in Crimea.
When the probe was on its path around the Moon, I was at the center. So I took the mike and said: 'The flight is proceeding according to normal; we're approaching the surface…'"
The Americans bit the bait. Moments after that, President Nixon asked United States space advisor::"Why the hell is Popovich reporting from the moon?"
A month later, Borman visited the USSR, and the moment he spotted Popovich at the airport, he yelled: (Hey you, space hooligan!"
