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Mission record

Cosmos 96

Also known as Cosmos96, Kosmos 96

U.S.S.R · Launched

Explore trajectory

Failed · Failure

A mission NSSDCA describes as intended for a Venus lander, presumably similar in design to the Venera 3 which had launched a week earlier. The spacecraft attained Earth orbit and the main rocket body separated from the orbiting launch platform; it is believed an explosion, perhaps during ignition for insertion into a Venus transfer orbit, damaged the platform and produced at least six additional fragments. The damaged spacecraft remained in orbit for 16 days and reentered the Earth's atmosphere on 9 December 1965.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Molniya-M
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), U.S.S.R
Countries
Soviet Union
Mission types
Lander

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched into Earth orbit on a Molniya-M

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1965-11-23T03:22:00Z, recorded at minute precision because the page prints a whole minute with zero seconds, and an Earth orbit with a periapsis of 227.00 km, an apoapsis of 310.00 km, a period of 89.80 minutes and an inclination of 51.900°. That page disagrees with itself by one minute and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved: the earlier of its two Earth-orbit rows gives an epoch start of 1965-11-23 03:21:00. Source review: NSSDCA tentatively calls it a Venera 3 lander; NASA history calls it a 3MV-4 flyby spacecraft. Do not create a lander from the tentative classification. NSSDCA launch 03:22 UTC conflicts with the history's 03:14 UT on November 23. Its orbit start at 03:21 also predates its own launch field. Two orbit rows describe changing apsides and different reported eccentricities; these summaries do not constitute a complete internally reconciled element solution.

    Earth

  2. Mission end

    Reentered after 16 days in orbit

    The master catalog records that the damaged spacecraft remained in orbit for 16 days and reentered the Earth's atmosphere on 9 December 1965, and the launch/orbital information page gives a decay date of 1965-12-09. That reentry has been linked to a fireball seen over southwestern Ontario and at least eight states at 21:43 UT the same day, and the master catalog records the link as refuted rather than open: U.S. Air Force tracking data indicate the spacecraft orbit decayed earlier than 21:43 UT, and other analyses of the spacecraft orbit definitively indicate it could not have been the Cosmos 96 spacecraft.

    Earth

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Cosmos 96 · Spacecraft

    Destinations: Venus

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

Known dates and encounters do not uniquely determine a flight path. This mission’s sourced timeline is available above; no verified trajectory is currently published here.

What is needed to reconstruct this path?
  • A frame-qualified position and vector velocity at an epoch, or equivalent complete orbital elements.
  • Finer event-time constraints where required by an orbital reconstruction; the stored day/month/year precision is retained.
  • The actual failed-flight state history. Intended destinations are not evidence that the spacecraft reached them.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 14, 2026