Mission Summary
Pioneer P-30 was the United States’ second attempt to place a spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, following the launch failure of Pioneer P-3 ten months earlier. Launched September 25, 1960, from Cape Canaveral, it was another of the large “paddle-wheel” probes built for the Atlas-Able program, carrying an improved instrument payload aimed at the lunar environment.
The 176-kilogram probe kept the four-paddle solar-cell design of its predecessor but swapped in new instruments, among them a plasma probe and a scintillation spectrometer, to study the radiation and particles near the Moon and to look for a lunar magnetic field. A hydrazine retro-engine was again meant to brake the craft into lunar orbit after the days-long coast out from Earth.
The flight failed before reaching orbit. The Atlas first stage performed well, but the Able second stage malfunctioned, leaving the probe far short of the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravity. The vehicle climbed to an altitude of about 1,290 kilometers before falling back and burning up in the atmosphere, ending the mission long before its instruments could reach deep space.
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