Victoire sur l'espace
La leçon des satellites et de la conquête lunaire
Technical assessment of the first space age, from the 1957 Sputniks to the impact of Lunik II on the Moon in September 1959. Albert Ducrocq reviews what artificial satellites revealed about the upper atmosphere, the true shape of the Earth and the radiation belts, then turns to the engineering problems of telemetry, attitude stabilisation and capsule recovery. The closing chapters address human spaceflight, the self-guidance of lunar probes and the ballistics of journeys to Venus and Mars, with an appendix gathering the formulae used. Illustrated with 29 figures, the book was published by Julliard a few weeks after the Lunik II and Lunik III launches.