Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

Luna 11, 12 design
presumably this was accomplished on the first day during the low points of the orbital
passes. Thrusters were used extensively to point Luna 12 toward landing sites and on
the second day the spacecraft was put into a slow roll so as to accomplish the rest of its
mission.
The whole mission lasted three months and ended on 19th January 1967 after 85
days, 602 orbits and 302 communications sessions. The imaging, scanner and relay
system had a resolution of between 15 m and 20 m and could be transmitted at either
67 lines/frame for 125 sec (quick look) or at 1,100 lines a frame for 34min (high
resolution). The target areas were the Sea of Rains, Ocean of Storms and craters
Ariastarcus and Alphonsus: a Soviet photograph released late in 1966 showed
cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin, Alexei Leonov, Vladimir Komarov and Yevgeni Khrunov
pouring excitedly over its pictures.
The Russians gave only a short account of the Luna 12 mission, the principal one
being Luna 12 transmits, published in Pravda on 6th November 1966 and they released
only a small number of images from Luna 12, much inferior in quality to the American