On Sept. 20, 1970, the Soviet Union'sLuna 16moon probe landed on the moon to retrieve a soil sample and return it to Earth.
Luna 16 was the first robotic spacecraft to succeed in landing onthe moon, scooping up a soil sample and returning it to Earth four days after its landing. Before Luna 16, theSoviet space programhad tried and failed five times to return a sample from the moon. Overall, this was the third lunar sample brought to Earth.
NASA'sApollo 11andApollo 12missions had also brought back some rocks and soil from the moon. Luna 16 made a soft landing on the lunar surface in a mare known as "the Sea of Fertility," where it retrieved 101 grams of lunar soil.
Why it mattered
By the time the Soviet Union launched its Luna 16 spacecraftin 1970, it had already lost theSpace Raceto the moon to NASA's Apollo 11, which landed astronauts on the surface on July 20, 1969, withNeil ArmstrongandBuzz Aldrincollecting 47.6 pounds (21.6 kilograms) of lunar samples, including 50 moon rocks. But the Soviet Union still wanted a way to collect samples of its own.
That's where Luna 16 came in — and succeeded.
The Soviet Union launched Luna 16 atop aProton K rocketon Sept. 12, 1970, with the probe taking eight days to reach the moon and make its historic landing. After collecting its admittedly small sample of lunar material (101 grams is only 3.5 ounces), the spacecraft loaded it into a sample return capsule and launched it back toward Earth on Sept. 21. The return capsule landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan, similar to Russia'sSoyuz cosmonaut capsulestoday, on Sept. 24 of that year.
Luna 16 proved to the Soviet Union that it could collect moon samples robotically, without the need for costly crewed systems and their associated risk. (The Soviet Union's plannedN-1 moon rocketsuffered major setbacks during the race to the moon, some of them explosive.)
The mission also proved that a spacecraft could drill into the moon to collect samples, instead of just scoop up dirt or rocks on the surface. Luna 16 drilled about 35 centimeters into the moon to collect its core sample. The process took about 7 minutes and was performed entirely in the dark as the sun had set over the landing location,according to the European Space Agency. In fact, because it was night on the Sea of Fertility, Luna 16 became the first moon probe ever to land in darkness, ESA said.
On this day in space! Sept. 19, 1996: Shuttle Atlantis docks at Mir station
Contributing expert
Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
With contributions from
- Tariq MalikEditor-in-Chief
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