Long lost Soviet robot found on Moon

Long lost Soviet robot found on Moon. FYI, interesting stuff imo.

 

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Thanks!

With all the excitement from the first manned landing in 1969, this Soviet achievement was overshadowed at the time, and nearly forgotten. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

 

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Much appreciated. I didn't know about it either!

 

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Wow I never knew Russia had a bot on the moon.

 

It's a genuine rover like spirit and opportunity on mars. It was certainly a succes story lunokhod 1 travelled a distance of 10540 meters it's twin Lunokhod 2 actually traveled 37km compare that with spirit's (mars) 7730 meters and opportunities 34365 meters it's certainly not bad for a '70's rover. wow less then 3 km for opportunity and it will hold the new record.

 

I agree that's not bad for the 70's...

 

Controllers finished the last communications session with Lunokhod 1 at 13:05 UT on September 14, 1971. Attempts to re-establish contact were finally discontinued and the operations of Lunokhod 1 officially ceased on October 4, 1971, the anniversary of Sputnik 1. During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod travelled 10,540 metres (6.55 miles)

On April 22, 2010 and days following, the team successfully measured the distance several times. The intersection of the spheres described by the measured distances then pinpoint the current location of Lunokhod 1 to within 1 meter.[5][6] APOLLO is now using Lunokhod 1's reflector for experiments, as they discovered, to their surprise, that it was returning much more light than other reflectors on the moon. According to a NASA press release, APOLLO researcher Tom Murphy said, "We got about 2,000 photons from Lunokhod 1 on our first try. After almost 40 years of silence, this rover still has a lot to say."[7]

WIKI


So while this rover was there America was having humans walking around and visiting the moon many times. Top bad they never knew about this rover back then, it would have been interesting to actually see it when they were around to confirm it was actually there then. I wonder why Russia didn't tell anyone about its rover then? :shrug:

 

America and the USSR where competing for premieres at the time I'm pretty sure the russians where pretty open it, altough I have no proof of that at the time. The reason they didn't bother with it was simply because it was soviet property (at the time the second is now ownend by some civilian) , and they weighted +800 kg each with some parts being radio-active

 

Soviet an the U.S. Were in the cold war. I wonder what was radio-active?

 

So it was only recently that we learned about this robot being sent there, which makes me wonder why we weren't told about when they did put it there, why wait so long? If there was a radioactive supply to use as a fuel then it would have been a better idea to let us know about it to keep us away from getting exposure to it if it were to leak.

 

Lunokhod was launched in november 1970 and got a article in time magazine that same month (link) meaning 1 the americans knew abouth it 2 the soviets where bragging abouth it.


The radio-active component was polonium-210 and it was used to heat the rover altough it has a half life of a 102 days leaving pb(lead)205 and I've got no idea if that is still considerd radioactive