Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Luna 16 lands on Moon, blasts off again 1970


The Soviet spacecraft Luna 16 landed on the moon September 20, 1970, grabbed a sample of moon dirt and its upper stage blasted off just a day later.  It returned to Earth September 24 with 101g of lunar soil.

It was the first unmanned mission to return from the moon with soil samples and the third overall mission, behind Apollo 11 and Apollo 12.  Results of its analyses were similar to those of the samples returned from Apollo 12.

In other words, we coulda told them that!


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