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Mission record

Zond 1

Also known as Zond1

U.S.S.R · Launched

Explore trajectory

Lost · Failure

A spacecraft launched from an Earth orbiting Tyazheliy Sputnik platform towards Venus, originally described as a deep-space engineering test and, in NSSDCA's words, clearly intended as a Venus flyby and lander. Within a week of launch its pressurized inner compartment was found to be leaking, the internal pressure dropped to 1 mb and short circuits followed in some of the electronics including the radio transmitter; ground control worked out a way to communicate through the lander and control the spacecraft, and a second trajectory correction of 50 m/s put Zond 1 on a course to pass within about 100,000 km of Venus. Communications were lost on 24 May 1964 and the silent spacecraft flew past Venus and entered a heliocentric orbit.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Modified SS-6 (Sapwood) with 2nd Generation Upper Stage + Escape Stage
Launch site
Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), U.S.S.R
Countries
Soviet Union
Mission types
Flyby, Lander

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched towards Venus from a Tyazheliy Sputnik platform

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1964-04-02T02:42:40Z and publishes no trajectory details at all. The master catalog records that after insertion into Earth parking orbit on 2 April 1964 the spacecraft was launched from a Tyazheliy Sputnik platform towards Venus.

    Earth

  2. Milestone

    Midcourse correction near560000km from Earth

  3. Milestone

    Second midcourse correction

  4. Loss of contact

    Communications lost on 24 May 1964

    The master catalog records that communications from the spacecraft had failed on May 24, 1964, ten days after a second trajectory correction of 50 m/s made at a distance of 14 million km.

  5. Flyby

    Passed Venus with no contact

    The master catalog records that Zond 1 flew by Venus on July 19, 1964, at a distance of 100,000 km and entered a heliocentric orbit. Recorded at day precision because that page publishes only the date and the launch/orbital information page publishes no trajectory details at all.

    Venus

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Zond 1 · Spacecraft

    Destinations: Venus

    • Zond 1 lander · Lander

      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.
  • Approach/departure directions and burn vectors between the reported encounters; body names and encounter distances alone are insufficient.
  • Separate state histories and release epochs for the listed vehicles; a parent mission trajectory cannot be assigned to every component.
  • 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 13, 2026