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Lunokhod 1 was the first of two unmanned lunar
roverslanded on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of its Lunokhod
program. The Luna 17 spacecraft carried Lunokhod 1 to the Moon
in 1970. Lunokhod 1 was the first remote-controlled robot "rover"
to freely move across the surface of an astronomical object beyond
the Earth. Lunokhod 0, the previous and first attempt to do so,
launched in February 1969 but failed to reach orbit.
Lunokhod 1
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First Page of (earlly) Secret Report
about Lunokhod- 1
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Luna 17 was launched on November 10, 1970 at 14:44:01 UTC. After
reaching earth parking orbit, the final stage of Luna 17''s launching
rocket fired to place it into a trajectory towards the Moon (1970-11-10
at 14:54 UTC). After two course correction maneuvers (on November
12 and 14), it entered lunar orbit on November 15, 1970 at 22:00
UTC. The spacecraft softly landed on the Moon in the Sea of Rains.
The spacecraft had dual ramps by which the payload, Lunokhod 1,
descended to the lunar surface.
During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod 1 travelled 10,540 metres (6.55
miles) and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution
panoramas. In addition, it performed 25 lunar soil analyses
with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer
and used its penetrometer at 500
different locations.
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In
2017 Report about the mission was open to free access in the internet.
However, the report has some censoring, all photos from the report
are removed. Anyway, it is very interesting historic document
that you may download from antentop.
The document in Russian.
Link
for download:
http://www.antentop.org/library/shelf_lunokhod.htm
Ownership
of Lunokhod 2 and the Luna 21 lander was sold by the Lavochkin
Association for US $ 68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction
in New York. The buyer was computer gaming entrepreneur and astronaut’s
son Richard Garriott, who is also known by the name of his gaming
character Lord British...
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