No Soviet Claims To Moon

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29001, 16 September 1959, Page 15

No Soviet Claims To Moon

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 920 p.m.) LONDON, September 15. The world today hailed the success of the Soviet moon rocket as a major step towards a “space civilisation,” although many scientists claimed they were “not surprised by the Russian achievement.”

With the hammer and sickle placed on the moon, the question of sovereignty has become a world talking point.

But a leading Soviet scientist said yesterday at a news conference that there would be no territorial claim on the moon arising from the landing of the rocket.

Who owns the moon? The Communist Party newspaper “Pravda” neatly expressed the thought in everyone's mind with a cartoon showing the hammer and sickle firmly planted in the moon as it floated over the Kremlin.

In West Germany, the head of Hamburg University’s research institute for international law, Professor Herbert Krueger, said it was not enough to take possession symbolically. The claimant “must have been there and also be able to continue to control there,” he said However, Professor Alexander Topchiev, vice-president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, announced at a news conference that there would be no territorial claims by the Soviet Union as a result of the rocket's flight Crowds of journalists filled the academy ball for the news confenmce,- which was also televised and broadcast the Soviet news agency, Tass, reported. Professor Topchiev said that as a result of the launching of the rocket a great number of records had been obtained which were now being successfully worked out. "All scientific equipment functioned normally right up to the moment of the container’s contact with the moon's surface. “We are waiting to receive from our scientists soon the results of readings made,” he said. A geophysicist, Egeni Fyodorov, said that the Soviet scientists were ready to provide the scientists of all countries with the data obtained with the help of the second space rocket. This scientific material, like the information received earlier from the sputniks and the first space rocket, would be published after due analysis and made accessible to specialists throughout the world. Professor Topchiev said the guidance system had worked with great accuracy and had proved “perfectly adequate." He referred especially to the question of preventing the contamination of the moon’s surface with terrestrial micro-organisms. This important requirement had been fully complied with, he said. Processes hitherto unknown to science were going on in cosmic space near the earth. Professor Sergei Vernov told the press conference. “If I may put it this way, the earth has transformed the cosmic space round it. Under the in-

fluence of the earth’s magnetic field, two huge belts of heightened radiation have formed round our planet,” he said. “Completed research has permitted us to establish that the radiation belt farthest from the earth stretches to a distance of up to 10 radiuses from the centre of the globe.”

The rocket was launched when conditions were favourable. There were “no false starts,” Professor Topchiev said. The nearness in time of the launching and Mr Khrushchev’s American tour was “just a coincidence which we were glad of.” The method of artificial comets, proposed by Soviet scientists, brilliantly justified itself and yielded good results in the visual detemination of the lunar rocket’s bearings. The artificial comet was observed on September 12 for five to six minutes. Its maximum

brightness equalled that of a fourth-fifth magnitude star. Another scientist, Professor Leonid Sedov, said the landing had been possible through Lunik’s accurate and dependable automatic equipment. For the rocket to follow the required flight paths, its boost speed had to be accurate within one metre a second, the angle had to be accurate within one degree, and the launching time to be accurate to within a few seconds. All these requirements were fulfilled.