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Moscow's Moon Memories -- 25 Years Ago
By Greg Clark
Staff Writer
posted: 05:28 am ET
28 October 1999
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luna23_991028Twenty-five years ago, the Soviet Union launched Luna 23, a spacecraft that was to land on the moon, collect ground samples and then return them to Earth. Had the mission succeeded, it would have been the third such robotic sample-return mission, but the spacecraft was damaged during landing and the sample-collection apparatus could not function. Transmissions from the spacecraft ended three days after touchdown. The Soviets had retrieved samples from the moon in 1970 and 1972, with Luna 16 and Luna 20. Those two craft had returned capsules carrying a total of 4.5 ounces (about 130 grams) of lunar ground samples. The United States had beat the Soviets in the race to land a person on the moon, but the USSR had an aggressive robotic program that boasted a number of firsts. In January 1959, Luna 1 was the first spacecraft to reach the moon. The first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the lunar surface was Luna 9 in 1966. Luna 16 was the first robotic probe to land on the moon and send a sample back to Earth, though its accomplishment was tempered by the fact U.S. astronauts had already brought back samples during the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions. The Soviet Union had also sent two robotic rovers to the moon. The crippling of Luna 23 was not a complete loss for the Soviet space program at the time. An orbiter had already reached the moon in June 1974 to begin an orbital science mission that would last 18 months. The third successful Soviet sample-return would come in 1976 with the Luna 24 mission. That spacecraft landed several hundred yards from the failed Luna 23, and returned about 6 ounces of lunar material to Earth. Luna 24 would be the last of the Luna series of spacecraft. Today it remains the last spacecraft designed to land on the moon to have conducted a surface mission.
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