Soviet Steppe Tortoises Orbit Moon Ahead of Humans in 1968, via Zond 5 Flight
In the race to the Moon, the Soviet Union made significant strides, albeit with uncrewed spacecraft. The journey began in March 1966, when the Soviet Union launched Luna 10, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Moon. NASA explains that Luna 10 was put into a selenocentric orbit on 3 April 1966. The spacecraft had an apogee of 1015 km, a perigee of 350 km, an inclination to the equatorial plane of 72 degrees, and an orbital time of 2 hours 58 minutes.
A few months later, in September 1966, the Soviet Union launched another spacecraft, Luna 12, which followed Luna 10 and also orbited the Moon. Luna 12 had an apogee of 1740 km, a perigee of 100 km, an inclination of 20 degrees, and an orbital time of 3 hours 25 minutes. Both Luna 10 and Luna 12 contained spectrometers to study the lunar surface and gamma radiation.
However, the success of these programs on the second front was not promising by the mid-60s. In March 1968, the Soviet Union launched Zond 4, which reached lunar distances but did not orbit the Moon due to navigation system errors. The same year, in September, the Soviet Union launched Zond 5, which included a payload of animals and plants. The flight of Zond 5 caused concern in the U.S. that the Soviets would send cosmonauts aboard the next Zond and complete the first crewed circumlunar mission.
Zond 5 passed 1,950 kilometers above the Moon's farside and returned to Earth, but its guidance systems failed, resulting in an unplanned landing in the Indian Ocean. Despite the mishap, the spacecraft capsule was recovered by Soviet sailors, and the animals on board, including two Russian steppe tortoises, survived the trip. Upon return to Moscow, the tortoises were found to be in good health, though they had lost a little weight in space.
The successful Zond 5 mission and images of a Soviet lunar booster on the launch pad may have contributed to the decision to send Apollo 8 on its circumlunar mission in December 1968. The first humans to orbit the Moon were Americans on Apollo 8, and the first humans to land and return from the Moon were Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in July 1969.
The Soviet Union had two separate programs aimed at returning a spacecraft to Earth after sending it around the Moon and landing on it, with the Saturn-V class N1 Moon rocket and the Zond program being part of these efforts. The Soviet Union never sent a human to the Moon; their lunar missions were uncrewed.
Tragically, after the mission was over, Luna 10 orbited for an unknown amount of time before crashing down to the lunar surface. The legacy of the Soviet Union's lunar exploration, however, remains significant, with their uncrewed missions paving the way for the first human expeditions to the Moon.
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