Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

Earthrise for Zond 7
their portholes, passing by only 1,200 km below. The commander would keep a firm
lock on the moon, while the flight engineer would take pictures of the farside peaks,
jumbled highlands and craters, for the farside of the moon has few seas or mare.
As they soared around the farside, the cosmonauts would be conscious of coming
around the limb of the moon. The black of the sky would fill their view above as the
moon receded below. As they rounded the moon, they would have seen a nearly full
round Earth coming over the horizon, not the crescent enjoyed by Apollo 8. The
Akademik Sergei Korolev would reestablish radio contact with Yevpatoria. This
would be one of the great moments of the mission, for the cosmonauts would
now describe everything that they saw below and presently behind them and as soon
as possible beam down television as well as radio. Their excited comments would later
be replayed time and time again.
A mid-course correction would be the main feature at the end of day 4. The
atmosphere would be relaxed, after the excitement of the previous day, but in the
background was the awareness that the most dangerous manoeuvre of the mission lay
ahead. The course home would be checked time and time again, with a final adjustment
made 90,000 km out, done by the crew if the automatic system failed. The
southern hemisphere would grow and grow in Zond's window. Contact with the
ground stations in Russia would be lost, though attempts would be made to retain
communications through ships at sea. The two cosmonauts would soon perceive Zond
to be picking up speed. Strapping themselves in their cabin, they would drop the
service module and their own high-gain antenna and then they would tilt the heatshield
of their acorn-shaped cabin at the correct angle in the direction of flight. This
was a manoeuvre they had practised a hundred times or more. Now they would feel
the gravity forces again, for the first time in six days, as Zond burrowed into the