Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

of the Earth's full globe over the moon's surface as Zond came around the back of the
moon. Like Zond 5, voice transmissions were sent on the way back. Zond 7 headed
back to the Earth, skipped like a pebble across the atmosphere to soft land in the
summer fields of Kustanai in Kazakhstan after 138 hr 25 min. It was a textbook
mission.
How easy it all seemed now. After the total success of Zond 7, plans for a manned
circumlunar mission were revived and there were still four more Zond spacecraft in the
construction shop - one even turned up in subsequent pictures with 'Zond 9' painted
in red on the side. The state commission responsible for the L-1 Zond programme met
on 19th September and the decision was taken to fly Zond 8 as a final rehearsal around
the moon in December 1969, with a manned mission to mark the centenary of Lenin's
birth in April 1970, which would be a big national event.
This plan, which was probably designed to appeal to the political leadership, did
not in fact win government approval. There were mixed opinions among those
administering the Soviet space programme as to whether a man-around-the-moon
programme should still fly. Many had serious reservations about flying a mission that
would be visibly far inferior not only to Apollo 11 but to the two Apollo lunarorbiting
flights that preceded it. Others disagreed, arguing that the Soviet Union
would, by sending cosmonauts to the moon and back, demonstrate at least some form
of parity with the United States. In 1970, few other manned spaceflights were in
prospect, so a flight around the moon would at least boost morale. The normally
cautious chief designer Vasili Mishin pressed hard for cosmonauts to make the lunar
journey on the basis that the experience gained would be important in paving the way
for a manned journey to a landing later. The political decision, though, was a final
'no', the compromise being that Mishin was allowed to fly one more Zond but without
a crew. Two of the cosmonauts in the programme subsequently went on record to
explain the decision. The political bosses were afraid of the risk that someone would be
killed, said Oleg Makarov, who was slated for the mission. Another cosmonaut
involved, Georgi Grechko, felt that the primary reason was political: there was no
point in doing something the Americans had already done [12]. In the end, Lenin's
centenary was marked, indirectly and two months after the event, by the 18-day
duration mission of Andrian Nikolayev and Vitally Sevastianov.
Zond 8 was eventually flown (20th-27th October 1970). It carried tortoises, flies,
onions, wheat, barley and microbes and was the subject of new navigation tests.
Astronomical telescopes photographed Zond as far as 300,000 km out from Earth to
check its trajectory. Zond 8 came as close as 1,110 km over the northern hemisphere of
the lunar surface, the closest of all the Zonds. Two sets of black-and-white images
were taken, before and after approach. The 400 mm black-and-white camera of
the type used on Zonds 5 and 6 was carried. These were high-density pictures,
8,000 by 6,000 pixels and are still some of the best close-up pictures of the moon
ever taken [13].
There have been contradictory views as to whether Zond 8 was intended to
return to the Soviet Union or be recovered in the Indian Ocean. The records now
show that the recovery in the Indian Ocean was deliberate and not the result of a
failure. As we know, the optimum trajectory for a returning Zond was to reenter over