Possible Explanation Of Mystery Signals

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31780, 10 September 1968, Page 21

Possible Explanation Of Mystery Signals

{ A correspondent has written that about five years and a half ago a Russian satellite Jon the moon stopped sending signals and then some later started again for some reason which puzzled Russian scientists. He wants to know the date the satellite restarted transmitting and ! whether it is still in its original position. From time to time the news agencies of the world report, in all honesty, seemingly sensational events which are later found to have rather mundane explanations. The explanations are rarely pub licised. This is what I feel has happened in this case. In the first place no Soviet vehicle landed on the moon in 1963, which is about five I years and a half ago. In fact ■there was no lunar landing between the impact of Lunik 2 in September, 1959, and that ; of Luna 5 in May, 1965. Both ■ of these vehicles made hard ■ landings and there was no I possibility of a subsequent transmission from either. During 1965 there was a reI port of mystery radio waves picked up by the Russian ! space-probe Zond 2, which I had been launched in the general direction of Mars in November, 1964. Soviet radio astronomers later agreed that the mysterious signals were

a particularly intense outburst of radio noise originating from the sun. Solar radio noise has many diverse characteristics which could easily confuse the unsophisticated recognition facilities built into an unmanned space vehicle. This is one of the reasons why manned spaceflights are so important for proper space exploration.