Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

Valeri Barsukov
Despite the heat of the moon race, scientists from the two countries were eager to
share and compare the results of their analysis of the results of the moon missions.
Many geologists made extensive cross-comparisons of the differences between the
three Luna samples and the six Apollo samples, classifying them according to origin,
type and composition. Even though the Luna samples were small, they were three
distinct types: mare, highland and core. The glassy features of the Luna 16 rock were
especially unusual. In the year after Luna 24's return, NASA published the proceedings
of the Soviet-American conference on the geochemistry of the moon and planets
[15] and Soviet papers were published in other Western outlets, such as the journal The
Moon. The NASA papers included the analysis of the moonrock collected by the
Lunas and various articles, ranging from studies of the rocks from an individual
mission to broader reviews, such as T.V. Malysheva's The problem of the origin of the
lunar maria and continents. Lunokhod 2 produced a rich seam of scientific papers, such
as L.L. Vanyan's Deep electronic sounding of the moon with Lunokhod 2, Measurement
of sky brightness from Lunokhod 2 and Dolgov et al.'s: The magnetic field in Le
Monnier Bay according to Lunokhod 2. Kiril Florensky's Role of exogenic factors
in the formation of the lunar surface included a series of hitherto unseen Lunokhod 2
pictures. The results of the very last mission were published by Nauka as Lunar soil
from the Mare Crisium, by Valeri Barsukov, in 1980.
As for Alexander Kemurdzhian, the designer of the moonrovers, he wrote
another thesis about his creations, obtaining a second doctorate and the title of
professor. His STR-1 robot was involved in the investigation and cleanup of the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Kemurdzhian exposed himself to so much radiation there
that he had to be treated in the Moscow #20 hospital afterwards. He wrote 200
scientific works and patented 50 inventions. Almost eighty, he retired in 1998, though
colleagues noticed little change in his output or energy and he was the chief speaker at
the 30th anniversary of the Lunokhod meeting held in Tovstonogov in November
2000. His health deteriorated soon after this and he died on 24th February 2003 in the
hospital which had treated him for radiation burns. Alexander Kemurdzhian was
buried in the Armenian part of the Smolensky Cemetery in St Petersburg. Asteroid