Planetary Exploration Missions 879
FIGURE 7 Luna 9, a Soviet spacecraft, achieved history’s first
successful lunar touchdowns, delivering image panoramas
showing fine surface details.
Zond 3
A Soviet planetary spacecraft,Zond 3, launched on a test
flight including a lunar flyby, this mission in 1965 returned
improved imagery of parts of the Moon’s far side. (See nssdc
.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarussr.html.)
Luna 9 and 13
After many Soviet lunar failures in 1960–1965,Luna 9
and 13 in 1966 (Fig. 7) achieved history’s first and third
successful lunar touchdowns, delivering image panoramas
showing fine surface details. (See selena.sai.msu.ru/Home/
Spacecrafts/Luna-9/luna-9e.htm.)
Luna 10, 11, 12, and 14
These Soviet missions,Luna, in 1966 and 1968 achieved the
first entry into lunar orbit and made some measurements of
lunar gravity and geochemistry. (See http://www.iki.rssi.ru/solar/
eng/luna14.htm.)
Lunar Orbiter 1–5
Designed to image landing sites on the Moon in support of
Apollo, the first three of theAtlas-Agena-launchedLunar
OrbiterNASA photographic missions were so successful
that the last two were given the expanded task of map-
ping the entire Moon. (See http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/
History/TM-3487/top.htm.)
Surveyor 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7
NASA’sSurveyor 1, launched by Atlas-Centaur, achieved
the first lunar soft landing and returned television mosaics
of its surroundings. In addition to imagery, theSurveyors
in 1966 and 1967 yielded information on the mechanical
and chemical properties of the regolith. (See nssdc.gsfc
.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/surveyor.html.)Zond 5, 6, 7, and 8
TheZondSoviet spacecraft, launched from 1968–1970 by
large Proton vehicles, flew on circumlunar trajectories, re-
turning to Earth after passing over the Moon’s far side.
They were test flights for a never-completed human lu-
nar flight program. Payloads consisted of environmental in-
strumentation and biological specimens including tortoises.
The later flights demonstrated an ingenious skip re-entry,
dipping briefly into the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean
and then traveling on to land in central Asia. (See nssdc
.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1970-088A.)Apollo 8
When in 1961 US President John F. Kennedy called for
startingApollo, he had asked his advisors to describe a
program in which “we can win” in competition with the
USSR. Observation of Soviet lunar launch preparations and
test flights led to a decision to send a human crew to the
Moon as soon as possible. The riskyApollo 8mission in
1968 was the result. It went into lunar orbit with only the
Command and Service Modules (CSM) because the lunar
landing module (LM) was not yet available. Thus there was
no prospect of saving the mission in “LM Lifeboat” mode
as had to be done inApollo 13(see below). TheApollo 8
crew broadcast TV images and a Christmas voice message
from lunar orbit, took photos, made visual observations, and
returned safely to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. (See
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo8/Apollo8.html.)Apollo 10
In the final rehearsal for a lunar landing in 1969 (after
Apollo 9’s successful Earth-orbiting test of the LM), the
Apollo 10crew exercised all LM functions in low lunar or-
bit, rendezvoused with the CSM, and returned to Earth.
(See http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo10/Apollo10.html.)Apollo 11
Apollo 11, the mission that won the greatest peaceful inter-
national contest placed, on 20 July 1969, the first human
footprints on the Moon. The LM crew gathered rock and
soil samples and installed a set of long-lived instruments on