Completed · Success
Soviet circumlunar precursor to crewed lunar spacecraft that flew 1,950 km above the Moon's surface carrying a biological payload of turtles, wine flies, meal worms, plants, seeds and bacteria, then made a ballistic reentry and was recovered from the Indian Ocean.
- 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
- Flyby
Chronology
Mission timeline
Milestone
Midcourse correction
Milestone
Earth photograph
Landing
Zond 5 reentry capsule splashed down in the Indian Ocean near 32°38′ S, 65°33′ E and was recovered
Earth
Mission architecture
Vehicles
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.
- Independent descent/return states and a calibrated Earth-fixed splashdown state; the reported minute and rounded coordinates do not define either.
- 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 recorded flyby and midcourse dates retain their source precision.
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through October 12, 2026
- Zond 5 - NASA NSSDCA Spacecraft Details — NSSDCAArchive · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- NASA current Zond 5 mission and hardware record — NSSDCATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Siddiqi (2018): Beyond Earth, a chronicle of deep space exploration 1958–2016 — NASAMission page · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Johnson (1995): The Soviet Reach for the Moon, L1 and L3 hardware — OTHERTechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Arnold (2013): Planetary Entry Probes, Zond schematic — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Dmitriyev (1968): The automatic station Zond-5 flew around the Moon and returned to Earth — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- TASS communiqué (1968): Having flown around the Moon, Zond 5 successfully returned to Earth with second cosmic velocity — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Zond5 Earth photograph, NASA translation (1968) — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and Planetary Probes 1958–2000, NASA/SP-2002-4524 — NASATechnical document · Supports: mission claims · event 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
- Planet Sizes and Locations in Our Solar System — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context