09 August 2016
Yutu, the Chinese Moon Rover, Dies on the Moon
...'s data gathering helped discover a new type of basalt, different from samples found by Apollo astronauts and the Luna landers. Its ground-penetrating radar was able to scan under the lunar surface and locate a top...
10 December 2018
First far side of the Moon mission underway
...'s light). The first grainy pictures to reveal scant details of the surface were first taken by the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft back in 1959. Less than a decade later in 1968, astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft became the...
23 November 2020
China's lunar sample return mission to launch tonight
... mission in more than four decades – the last undertaking was achieved by the former Soviet Union's unmanned Luna-24 mission, which brought back to Earth 170.1 grams of Moon rock and debris in August 1976. Chang’e 5 was...
03 October 2021
European-Russian Space Cooperation
... Jodrell and the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. Unfortunately, the British-Russian “romance” ended in February 1966 when Luna 9’s first photos of the Moon were received by Jodrell Bank and published in the following day’s Daily Express...
