Luna 15 to 24
Author(s): Jack Higgins DaveBowman2001
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The Luna Ye-8-5 spacecraft were a series of Soviet lunar landers that were designed to collect lunar samples robotically and send them back to Earth for analysis. Part of the overall Luna program, they were the first sample-return space probes ever launched and has successfully retrieved a total 301.1 g of lunar material across 3/11 successful missions from 1969 to 1976
| Luna Program (1959-Present) |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mission | Start | End | |||
| Luna 15 | 1969-Jul-17 | 1969-Jul-21 | |||
| Crashed on Mare Crisium, notable for running in parallel with Apollo 11 | |||||
| Cosmos 300 | 1969-Sept-23 | 1969-Sept-25 | |||
| Stranded in LEO after TLI burn failure | |||||
| Cosmos 305 | 1969-Oct-22 | 1969-Oct-24 | |||
| Stranded in LEO after TLI burn failure | |||||
| Luna 16 | 1970-Sept-12 | 1970-Sept-24 | |||
| Landed on Mare Fecundidatis. First successful robotic sample-return mission | |||||
| Luna 18 | 1971-Sept-2 | 1971-Sept-11 | |||
| Crashed on Terra Apollonius | |||||
| Luna 20 | 1972-Feb-14 | 1972-Feb-25 | |||
| Landed on Terra Apollonius, just 1.8 km from Luna 18's crash site | |||||
| Luna 23 | 1974-Oct-28 | 1974-Nov-9 | |||
| Hard-landed on Mare Crisium, failed to complete primary mission | |||||
| Luna 24 | 1976-Aug-9 | 1976-Aug-22 | |||
| Landed on Mare Crisium, last successful Soviet robotic space mission ever | |||||
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