Russian manned lunar programs
For more than a decade, beginning in 1959, the Soviet Union made a concerted effort to be the first to send humans around the Moon and the first to achieve a manned landing. But whereas the Apollo program unfolded in a blaze of publicity, details of the Eastern aspect of the Moon race only began to emerge with the advent of Perestroika and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Essentially, the Soviet Moon effort was three-pronged. The L-1 program was aimed at a manned circumlunar loop without a landing, and involved the use of unmanned Zond craft to flight validate the hardware. The L-3 program was designed to put a cosmonaut on the Moon's surface. Finally, the Luna series consisted of a variety of automated flyby, orbiter, hard- and soft-lander, sample-return, and rover vehicles. Only 20 of about 60 Soviet launches of all types of lunar craft in 1959-76 were successful.
L-1Sergei Korolėv's design bureau began work in 1965 on a manned spacecraft called L-1 intended to carry two cosmonauts on a single loop around the Moon. From the outside, the L-1 looked like the three-part Soyuz spacecraft but lacked its spherical orbital module. Other major differences were less obvious, including a modified propulsion system, a beefed up heat-shield, and long-range communication systems. Because of repeated equipment failures, the L-1 never flew with a crew. However, unmanned L-1 spacecraft traveled to the Moon five times from 1968 through 1970 as Zonds 4 to 8. These missions tested the spacecraft and the maneuvers necessary for a manned mission.
L-3Korolėv also began designing spacecraft for a manned lunar landing mission, and some hardware was built under Vasily Mishin's direction. This program, known as L-3, included an orbiter and a lander. The prototype lunar lander was successfully tested in Earth orbit, without a crew, three times in 1970-71 under the name Cosmos. The Soviet lunar lander, known as the Lunar Cabin (LK), was half the size and one-third the mass of the Apollo Lunar Module, and intended to carry one cosmonaut to the Moon's surface while the Lunar Orbiter Cabin (LOK) remained in lunar orbit with the second crewmember. The program depended on the development of a super-rocket known as the N-1. By the time the N-1 was ready to test launch, the LK and LOK were still being built so a modified L-1 spacecraft known as the L-1S was used as the primary payload. The N-1 was supposed to place the L-1S and a dummy LK on a trajectory toward the Moon. Once there, the L-1S alone would enter lunar orbit to take high-resolution photos of proposed landing sites and then return to Earth with the exposed film. For the mission, an Orientation Engine Module (DOK) would be attached to the front of the L-1S to slow it enough to place it into lunar orbit, after which the DOK would be jettisoned. The L-1S would then use its own propulsion system, located in the Instrument Module, to accelerate out of lunar orbit for the return to Earth. The spacecraft would perform a double-skip reentry as in previous L-1/Zond flights as a test of the nearly identical LOK Descent Module. However, four successive failures of the N-1's huge 30-engine first stage left the L-3 program in tatters.
Realizing that the Moon race was lost the Soviets attempted to beat Apollo 11 at the last moment with an automated sample return, but Luna 15 crash-landed just as Armstrong and Aldrin were on their way back from the surface. Subsequently, the Soviets switched their main goal in manned spaceflight to establishing a permanent presence in Earth, adapting their Moon-era hardware to launch a number of Salyut space stations and using Soyuz spacecraft to ferry crews and supplies for missions of increasing duration. Their lunar ambitions were confined to large robotic sample-return, rover, and orbiter missions in the form of Lunas 16 through 24.
Related category• MANNED SPACEFLIGHT
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