The Dark Side of the Moon

....And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

"Brain Damage," Roger Waters - Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd (1973)*

Today is the 40th anniversary of man’s greatest technical achievement – the landing of Apollo 11 on the surface of the Moon and the first men to walk on the lunar landscape. From a speech made by President John Kennedy to Congress in 1961, the collective minds of the best and the brightest took on this challenge - to send a man to the Moon and return him safely before the decade’s end. It was the pinnacle of success for a program that actually believed it could take man where no man had never gone before. The expansion of education with respect to Earth's development and history was truly geometric.

However, the modus operandi of the NASA-Lunar manned program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo) was not entirely altruistic – to expand the base of human knowledge. The primary drive for Kennedy’s rush to land on the Moon was to get there before the hated and dreaded commies – aka the Soviets - got there. After all the Russians surprised (or rather humiliated) the Americans by launching Sputnik in October 1957 – becoming the first country to put a satellite into orbit. The “Space Race," as the competitive battle of rocket technology and astronomy became to be known, was in fact just an extension of the political Cold War between the US and USSR. Fortunately for the planet, this chapter of the Cold War actually worked to benefit human knowledge and society (unlike the more deadly Arms Race and Proxy Wars that also sprung up during the 1960’s).

In fact, the success of the Apollo missions owes something to the achievements of the Soviet Lunar Program – know as Luna, even if it was just the competitive spirit.

Over a seventeen year period – 1959 to 1976, the Soviets Union launched 46 missions for lunar exploration. 15 were successful – either by entering orbit or landing on the moon. Many were unsuccessful or downright failures – but many of those details were not released to the world at-large until after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Some of the highlights of Luna are as follows:

• The first three missions in 1958 all failed on launch.
• Luna 1 was launched Jan 2, 1959 and was the first artificial satellite to reach the moon. The craft flew by on Jan 4 and then continued on, where it went into orbit around the Sun.
• Luna 2 was launched Sept 12, 1959. It became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, as it crashed to the surface on Sept 14.
• Luna 3 sent back the first pictures of the far (or dark) side of the Moon on Oct 18, 1959.
  
• Luna 4 did not receive a course correction and missed the Moon completely
• Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon – Feb 3, 1966. Transmissions and photos were sent back to Earth for 3 days – the first ever from an extraterrestrial body.
• Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon on Apr 1, 1966. Luna 10 made 460 orbits and transmitted data back to Earth through May 30, 1966.
• On December 24, 1966, Luna 13 landed on the Moon. The spacecraft sent back panoramic images of the surface for 4 days, when the batteries failed.
• Luna 15 was launched on Jul 13, 1969 - 3 days before Apollo 11 with the purpose of landing a robotic probe on the moon, collecting rocks and then returning to Earth – all before Apollo 11. The Soviets wanted to steal some of the thunder from the American manned mission. Luna 15 entered lunar orbit on July 17. When the Russian controllers finally fired the rockets to land, Luna 15 crashed into the Moon – a day after Armstrong and Aldrin had set down.
• Luna 16 was the first robotic probe to land on the Moon and return a sample of Moon rocks to Earth. The craft landed on the surface Sep 20, 1970 – 26 hours later the upper stage lifted off and returned to Earth with 101 grams of soil.
• Luna 17 carried the first rover to the Moon in Nov 1970. It remained operational until Oct 1971.
• Luna 20 landed on the Moon Feb 21, 1972. The probe drilled for lunar samples and returned to Earth four days later.
• Luna 21 carried the second rover vehicle – Lunokhod 2 - to the Moon on Jan 15, 1973. The rover took over 80,000 pictures and performed soil tests. To help the Soviets with this mission, the Americans gave the Russians photos taken by Apollo 17 to assist in navigating the landing. A few months later, the rover ended up in a crater and became covered in dust – terminating its mission on May 9. 1973.
• Luna 24 was the final mission of the Luna Program. The craft landed in Mare Crisium and safely returned soil samples to Earth on Aug 22, 1976.

Since Luna 24, no nation has landed on the moon.

*one of my favorite albums of all time