Luna 16 sample return
Luna 16 · 1970 CE · The Moon
Land in the Sea of Fertility, drill out a sample of lunar soil and return it to the Soviet Union without a crew.
Historical context
In 1967, by Siddiqi's account, Georgy Babakin's Lavochkin bureau proposed a robot that would land on the Moon, drill out a little soil and fly it home, in large part as insurance against losing the race to Apollo. Five of these Ye-8-5 craft failed between June 1969 and February 1970; one of them, Luna 15, crashed in the Sea of Crises while Apollo 11 was still on the Moon. The sixth, Luna 16, landed in the dark in the Sea of Fertility on 20 September 1970 and returned 101 grams of soil to Kazakhstan four days later.
The voyage, step by step
Sent up on a Proton
12 September 1970
At 13:25:52 UTC on 12 September 1970, 16:26 Moscow time, a heavy Proton lifts a 5,725-kilogram Ye-8-5 sample-return craft off the Tyuratam range.
Automatic descent
17 September 1970
Luna 16 enters lunar orbit on 17 September, spends three days lowering it, then drops toward the Sea of Fertility on its own.
Landing in the dark
20 September 1970
At 05:18 UTC on 20 September 1970 Luna 16 touches down in the Sea of Fertility in the lunar night, guided by radar rather than by any view of the ground.
Drilling the Sea of Fertility
20 September 1970
Less than an hour after landing, a hollow drill on a 90-centimetre arm bores thirty-five centimetres into the soil, then swings its core up to the return capsule.
A robot brings the Moon home
24 September 1970
At 07:43 UTC on 21 September the ascent stage lifts off; on 24 September its capsule parachutes onto the Kazakh steppe near Jezkazgan, then spelt Dzhezkazgan.
Outcome
Landed on 20 September 1970, drilled 35 cm and returned 101 g of soil, 105 g by one account, to Kazakhstan on 24 September: by Siddiqi's chronicle, the first fully automatic recovery of lunar samples.
Luna 16
Soviet robot that drilled lunar soil and flew it home in 1970; by Siddiqi's chronicle, the first fully automatic recovery of lunar samples.
Sources
- Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016 (NASA SP-2018-4041)Asif A. Siddiqi · NASA History Division · 2018
- Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (NASA SP-2000-4408), part 1Asif A. Siddiqi · NASA History Division · 2000
- Luna 16 — NSSDCA Master Catalog (Wayback Machine copy of 26 June 2025)NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive
- Luna 16Mark Robinson · Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, Arizona State University · 2010
- Spacecraft Related Coordinates — 2016 UpdateMark Robinson · Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, Arizona State University · 2016
- Science: Luna FirstTime · 1970
- Soviet Robot-Retrieved Moon Rocks Sell for $855,000 at Sotheby'sRobert Pearlman · Space.com · 2018
- Luna 16 — Wikipedia
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