Moon Flyby UR-500K(Proton)/L1(Zond) Program
Launched by a 3-staged Proton rocket, the L1(Zond) was a spacecraft from the Soyuz family and consisted of two or three modified modules of the main craft Soyuz 7K-OK with a total weight of 5.5 tons. The Apollo orbital spacecraft (command ship) for the lunar flyby also had two modules (command and service) but was five times heavier, carried a crew of three and entered lunar orbit, whereas the L1 (Zond) performed a flight around the Moon and came back on a return trajectory. Planned for 8 December 1968 for priority over the US, a first manned mission of the L1 (Zond) was cancelled due to insufficient readiness of the capsule and rocket. After Apollo 8 won the first (lunar flyby) phase of the Moon Race at the end of 1968, the Soviet leadership lost political interest in the L1 (Zond) program. A few reserve units of L1 (Zond) made unpiloted flights, but by the end of 1970 this program was cancelled.
Read more about this topic: Soviet Manned Lunar Programs
Famous quotes containing the words moon and/or program:
“Ms. Dog wouldn’t give them her buttocks.
She would moon at them.
Just at the killers of the dream.
The bus boys of the soul.
Or at death
who wants to make her a mummy.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Like other cities created overnight in the Outlet, Woodward acquired between noon and sunset of September 16, 1893, a population of five thousand; and that night a voluntary committee on law and order sent around the warning, “if you must shoot, shoot straight up!””
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)