Aug. 9,1976: Last Soviet-era Lunar Mission Begins

摘要

While the United States made its mark with the first human to land on the Moon, the Soviet Union turned its attention to an ambitious unmanned lunar program that concluded with the largest robotic lunar sample return mission to date. Luna 24, the last of the Soviet lunar space probes, was launched on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome Aug. 9, 1976. The spacecraft landed in the Mare Cri-sium, or Sea of Crisis, Aug. 18 and collected 170.1 grams worth of soil samples, which were returned to Earth in a capsule that landed Aug. 22 in western Siberia. Luna 24 was the third unmanned Soviet spacecraft, after Luna 16 and 20, to land, gather and return to the Earth samples of the lunar surface material scientists call regolith.