Sample returns and lunar rovers
By 1969, the Russians had realized that they were going to be beaten by the US
in the race to put a man on the Moon, but they made one last attempt to upstage
Apollo. Even as the Apollo 11 crew were preparing for launch, the Soviet probe
Luna 15 was already on its way to the Moon. It was a last-minute attempt to
snatch the first samples from the Moon, but it failed. Luna 15 crashed in Mare
Crisium while attempting to land, just over 10 hours after astronauts Neil
Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin had completed their historic Moon walk.
Although their “spoiler” had failed, the Russians finally succeeded in retrieving Moon samples
automatically with Luna 16 in September the following year. This scooped up 100 grams of lunar topsoil from
the surface of Mare Fecunditatis, but by then both Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 had
brought back many kilograms of Moonstuff.
Two months after Luna 16,
the Russians scored another first with a robotic rover called Lunokhod 1,
carried aboard Luna 17 which touched down near the western shores of Mare Imbrium in November 1970.
Driven by remote control from Earth, the eight-wheeled rover rolled down ramps
off the lander platform and explored the Moon for the next 11 months, covering
10.5 km while taking photographs, running in and out of craters, and analysing
the soil. An improved version with twice the top speed, Lunokhod 2, was
delivered aboard Luna 21 in January 1973. It landed in the ruined crater Le Monnier in eastern Mare
Serenitatis and covered 37 km during its four-month lifetime.
These automatic rovers and sample return missions were a useful complement to
the Apollo missions, providing information about areas not visited by
astronauts or the earlier Luna and Surveyor landers. The series came to an end
with Luna 24 in August 1976, which collected 170 grams of lunar samples from the surface of
Mare Crisium. Its return marked the end of the first era of lunar exploration.
