Russian Rovers on the Moon

An Ignorant American writes "Perusing an Air & Space magazine the other day, I came across an article about Russian Moon Rovers during the space-race era. Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat. I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either. They were called 'lunokhod', and were the first of their kind. Unmanned, remotely operated rovers with basic instrumentation. Two were successfully landed on the Moon, each driving for many miles on the Moon's surface, returning tens of thousands of pictures. You can do a Google Search to start your education, or read what they have to say at Wikipedia on the subject (Wikipedia also has some external links.)"

Comments

Not just a Google web search

[Anonymous Coward]

Also look at the pictures (images.google.com)

candidly

popular children toy

[kyknos.org]

in czech republic (fromer soviet ally) was a small model lunokchod with remote control. all people in eastern europ know lunokchods. i am surprised it is not known in usa, because american exploration of space was well known in the eastern block.

by th way, Lunochod means Moonwalker

Americans are from Mars, Soviets are from Venus

[Chagatai]

The Soviets also were the first ones to land probes on Venus in a series of missions known as Venera. These probes, amazingly, were a part of a mission that lasted over 20 years time, and brought us lots of goodies, including how anyone landing on Venus would encounter a lovely environment where lead melts on the ground and sulphuric acid rains from the sky... kind of like Los Angeles.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Em Ellel]

FYI: "Lunokhod" mean "moonwalker" in russian (They should sue Michael Jackson)

As for name, russian engineering projects are most often named after the lead engineer or location where they are made (common for russian planes and cars, like MiG actually is a shortened version of Mikoyan-Gurevich - names of the design team leads)

If you are in Kansas

[wowbagger]

And if you are in Kansas, you can see them st the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.

Some Russian achievements

[B.D.Mills]

If you can see the 1999 BBC-produced series "The Planets", you will find Lunokhod and other aspects of the Russian lunar missions get some coverage in the "Moon" episode, alongside the American space program. Some more facts about the Russian space program that you can find in that series:

• The Russians developed their own manned lunar module, but never got to the stage of launching cosmonauts. The Russian module would have held two cosmonauts. The unmanned tests were not particularly successful because they lost a number of the unmanned modules. The Russians didn't want to launch cosmonauts until they were 100% sure they would come back alive.
  
• The Russians were the first to send an unmanned probe to another world and have it return with samples. The Russians sent sample-return probes to the moon at around the same time as Apollo. One of these sample-return missions was launched a few days before Apollo 11. This particular mission was unsuccessful, with the probe crashing into the moon instead of landing. Although these missions only returned maybe a few kilos of lunar soil, that is enough for chemistry to be done on it.
  
• The Russians and Americans both prepared artificial lunar surfaces. The Americans used dynamite to create artificial craters and prepared an exact model of a small area of the Sea of Tranquillity, whereas the Russians weren't so exacting.
  

Re:Hmm

[baryon351]

One I hear repeated often is that the first woman in space was Sally Ride in June 1983. Sadly, this isn't just a US misconception, as it was one I was taught in Australia too.

It completely ignores Valentina Tereshkova, a russian woman who was not only the first woman in space 20 years earlier (almost to the day, in June 1963) but was about the sixth person into space entirely (I may have that position slightly wrong)

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Buran]

The reliable Soyuz rocket in use today was designed by Sergei Korolev, who was a brilliant rocket engineer who, like Wernher von Braun, dreamed of building rockets that could send people into space. He died in the mid-1960s, however, so his second-in-command designed the giant N-1 -- and the N-1's first stage had many, many small rockets powering it rather than a smaller number of large ones, as in the Saturn V. It's believed (according to a mid-90s NOVA program on the Soviet manned lunar effort, and other sources) that the sheer complexity of the N-1 was largely to blame for the failures.

How the cosmonauts really felt hasn't been addressed much if at all in any of the books or web sites I've read, nor have any documentaries.

Don't forget Luna 16 and 15

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Luna 16 which had a descent and
ascent stage and retrieved a lunar soil sample
which it brought back to Earth in Sept. 1970


Luna 16

Also don't forget Luna 15. Just two hours
before the Apollo 11 Eagle was due to lift
off from the Moon, Luna 15 crash-landed
into the Moon's surface. It's job had been
to robotically retrieve soil samples which
could well have trumped Apollo 11 in doing so
and without risking human lives.

Those old of us to vividly remember the
Apollo 11 landing will also recollect the
drama surrounding Luna 15 right up until the
last moment.

An unused rover is here in the states

[caffiend666]

There is an unused Lunokhod rover here in the states. Here is a color picture I took a few years ago. The rover is/was at the Kansas Cosmosphere. The Cosmosphere is a wonderful place, and well worth making a road trip.

The top of the rover popped open lengthwise to reveal the solar panels. The long nose looking thing on the front was the antenna. There are rumors that these rovers did sample returns even. Havn't seen any proof though.