Completed · Success
A long-lived Soviet lunar orbiter that imaged the surface and measured the Moon's shape, gravity and magnetic field.
- Destinations
- Launch vehicle
- Proton Booster Plus Upper Stage and Escape Stages
- Launch site
- Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), U.S.S.R
- Countries
- Soviet Union
- Mission types
- Orbiter
Chronology
Mission timeline
Launch
Luna 22 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome
NSSDCA's own Chronology of Lunar and Planetary Exploration lists this launch as 2 June 1974, which is the date this page gives for lunar orbit insertion. The master catalog date is committed; GCAT independently gives 1974 May 29.
Milestone
Luna 22 made a mid-course correction
Mission architecture
Vehicles
Luna 22 · Orbiter
Destinations: Moon
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.
- Approach/departure directions and burn vectors between the reported encounters; body names and encounter distances alone are insufficient.
- Finer event-time constraints where required by an orbital reconstruction; the stored day/month/year precision is retained.
- Published scalar orbit altitudes and inclination do not determine a timed, frame-qualified 3D position and velocity.
- NASA and NSSDCA initial apoapsis summaries differ by 1 km (222 versus 221); later burn vectors and epochs are incomplete.
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through August 27, 2026
- Luna 22 - NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog — NSSDCAMission page · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Luna 22 mission, spacecraft and orbital records — NSSDCATechnical document · Supports: mission claims
- Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016: Luna 19 and 22 instruments and lunar orbit summaries — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims
- DE421 lunar mean-Earth and principal-axes frame specification — NAIFTechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- DE440 lunar mean-Earth and principal-axes frame specification — NAIFSpice · Supports: destination/body context
- IAU rotational elements and body radii (PCK 00011) — NAIFSpice · Supports: destination/body context
- LOLA global lunar height maps, LDEM_4 V3 original PDS source label — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- LOLA 2023 south-polar elevation, uncertainty and effective-resolution maps — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Seen From Above: LROC site and terrain context — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- Moon Facts — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context
- SLDEM2015 Blue Ghost region: original PDS elevation-grid label — NASATechnical document · Supports: destination/body context
- JPL Solar System Dynamics Astrodynamic Parameters — JPLOther · Supports: destination/body context