Siberia, summer of 1976

Siberia, summer of 1976. Near the lowland town of Surgut on the River Ob in western Siberia, Russia’s space recovery forces had gathered to await the return of Russia’s latest moon probe. Already, the short, warm and fly-ridden Siberian summer was passing. Although it was only the 21st August, the birch trees were already turning colour and there was a cool breeze in the evening air. Gathered on the ground were amphibious army vehicles, designed to carry troops across marshy or rough terrain. In the air were half a dozen Mil helicopters, ready to spot a parachute opening in the sky. Getting to the moon probe quickly was important. They had missed Luna 20 four years earlier: it had come down, unseen, on an island in the middle of a snow-covered river, but thankfully they found it before the battery of its beeping beacon had given out. The diesel engines of the army ground crews were already running. The army crews stood around, waiting, waiting.

Bang! There was the sharp echo of a small sonic boom as the spherical spacecraft came through the sound barrier 20 km high. By this stage, it had barrelled through the high atmosphere at a speed of 7 km/sec, hitting the spot on the tiny 10-km by 20-km entry corridor necessary to ensure a safe return to Earth. The heatshield glowed red, then orange, then white hot as the cabin shed speed for heat. On board, in a sealed container, were precious rock and soil granules drilled up from the distant Sea of Crises on the moon’s northeastern face. The probe had left the moon three days earlier. Now, through the most perilous phase of the return, the cabin dropped, unaided, through the ever-denser layers of Earth’s atmosphere.

Fifteen kilometres high above the marshes, a meter sensed the growing density of Earth’s air. The lid of the cabin was explosively blown off. A small drogue parachute fluttered out. At 11 km, it had pulled out a much larger red-and-white canopy, ballooning out above the still-steaming sphere. Two beacons popped out of the top of the cabin. Abruptly halted in its downward spiral, the cabin twisted and was now caught in the wind and began to drift sideways and downward. The helicopter crews spotted the cabin in the air and picked up the beacon on their radios.

Over their radiophones they called up the amphibians who headed straight in the direction of the returning spacecraft. The helicopters saw the cabin reach the ground. The small parachute at once emptied and deflated to lie alongside. In minutes the amphibians had drawn up alongside. The army crews cut the parachute free. Gingerly – it was still warm from the hot fires of reentry – they lifted the blackened cabin into the back of their vehicle, driving back into Surgut. Within hours, it was on its way by air to the Moscow Vernadsky Institute. This was the third set of samples the Soviet Union had brought back from the moon. The first had come from the Sea of Fertility in 1970, with Luna 16. Two years later, Luna 20 had brought back a small sample from the Apollonius Highland. Luna 24 had gone a stage further and drilled deep into the lunar surface and this cabin had the deepest, biggest sample of moon soil of them all.

Nobody realized at the time that this was the last lunar mission of the Soviet Union. Fifty years later, lunar exploration is remembered for who won, the United States and who lost, the Soviet Union. In the popular mind, the view is that the Russians just did not have the technological capacity to send people to the moon. In reality, political rather than technical reasons prevented the Soviet Union from landing cosmonauts on the moon. It is often forgotten that the story of Soviet lunar exploration is, although it had its fair share of disappointments, also one of achieve­ment. The Soviet Union:

• Sent the first spacecraft past the moon (the First Cosmic Ship).

• Launched the first spacecraft to impact on the lunar surface (the Second Cosmic Ship).

• Sent the first spacecraft around the farside of the moon to take photographs (the Automatic Interplanetary Station).

• Made the first soft-landing on the moon (Luna 9).

• Put the first orbiter into lunar orbit (Luna 10).

• Pioneered sophisticated, precise high-speed reentries into the Earth’s atmosphere from the moon, becoming the first country to send a spaceship around the moon and recover it on Earth (Zond 5).

• Landed advanced roving laboratories that explored the moon for months on end (the Lunokhods).

• Retrieved two sets of rock samples from the surface of the moon by automatic spacecraft (Luna 16, 20) and drilled into the surface for a core sample (Luna 24).

• Returned a substantial volume of science from its lunar exploration programme.

Not only that, but the Soviet Union:

• Came close to sending a cosmonaut around the moon first.

• Built and successfully tested, in orbit, a lunar lander, the LK.

• Built a manned lunar orbiter, the LOK.

• Assembled and trained a team of cosmonauts to explore the moon’s surface, even selecting sites where they would land.

• Came close to perfecting a giant moon rocket, the N-1.

• Designed long-term lunar bases.

Although the United States Apollo programme is one of the great stories of human­kind, the story of Soviet and Russian lunar exploration is one worth telling too. First designs for lunar exploration date to the dark, final days of Stalin. The Soviet Union mapped out a plan for a lunar landing and, in pursuit of this, achieved most of the key ‘firsts’ of lunar exploration. Even when the manned programme faltered, a credible programme of unmanned lunar exploration was carried out, one which Luna 24 brought to an end. The story of Soviet lunar exploration is one of triumph and heartbreak, scientific achievement, engineering creativity, treachery and intrigue. Now, new lunar nations like China and India are following in the paths mapped out in the Soviet Union 60 years ago. And Russia itself is preparing to return to the moon, with the new Luna Glob mission in planning.