

Forgotten Soviet Moon Rover Beams Light Back to Earth - jcr
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/forgotten-soviet-moon-rover-beams-light-back-to-earth/0

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pavlov
I love the look of that Lunokhod rover.

It reminds me of Russian author Victor Pelevin's wonderful satirical mini-
novel "Omon Ra". The Soviet moon missions carried a heavy secret...

There's a free English translation of Omon Ra available online:

<http://a7sharp9.com/Omon.html>

I don't know about the quality of this translation, but I'd absolutely
recommend the book to anyone who's interested in post-Soviet Russia... And can
stomach Pelevin's sprawling irony, which may be the only appropriate literary
tool for approaching contemporary Russia :)

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InclinedPlane
The Lunokhod rovers have an unusual and unique appearance because they used
pressure vessels to contain the electronics.

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StuffMaster
Holy pressure vessel batman! I did not know that and find it weird and
fascinating.

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mcritz
Slighty deceptive headline. At first I thought it sounded like thus ancient
robot was transmitting light to earth.

Not so. It merely has a reflector that bounces earthbound researcher-gnereated
laser photons back.

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arethuza
Apparently Lunokhod 2 is now privately owned by a certain "Lord British":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_2>

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adavies42
> For every 1018 photons shot at the moon, only a single photon returns to the
> telescope.

Is that really 1018, or did 10^18 get mangled on its way onto the web?

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dalke
The latter. There's no way that it's reflecting a million watts back to the
Earth's surface (1/1018 of the main beam power). Or to put it another way,
with a beam "footprint" of 2km across, and with the size of the rover rather
less than 100 m across, there's no way it alone could return that high a
percentage of the light sent to it.

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chopsueyar
This is such an interesting story. This guy has quite the gravity labratory.

I like the analog rover, even if it doesn't run Python. What a difference 30
years makes.

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ck2
Wow, without parachutes, how did they land that thing?

Looks like a ancient ancestor of Spirit/Opportunity.

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masklinn
> Wow, without parachutes, how did they land that thing?

Erm... parachutes work through friction generating air resistance. There is no
air on the moon so parachutes don't do anything. They'd be pointless
encumbrance.

Much like apollo, the Luna landers used retrorockets (or tried to, anyway, all
attempts resulted in surface crashes until Luna 16)

> Looks like a ancient ancestor of Spirit/Opportunity.

Pretty much, and prefiguring Spirit/Opportunity Lunokhod 1's mission was
intended to last 3 lunar days (a bit under 3 earth months) and went through 11
instead (the mission clocked in at 322 earth days)

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soult
Your comment incorrectly states that Luna 1 to Luna 15 crashed into the Moon.
Luna 16 was not the first to successfully soft land and not all crashes were
accidents. Only 6 of the 14 Luna missions intended to soft-land on the moon
actually crashed. (There were a lot more Luna missions in total, some were not
supposed to try soft-landing, and some failed to even reach Moon orbit.)

For those who are interested in Space trivia:

According to Wikipedia[0], Luna 2 intentionally crasheded into the Moon,
making it the first human-made object to land on it. Luna 5, 7, 8 failed to
soft-land, making Luna 9 the first object to soft-land on the Moon. Luna 10,
11, 12 and 14 were designed to orbit the Moon and crash into it after they
failed. Luna 13 successfully landed on the Moon.

Luna 15 was supposed to bring back soil samples, but it crashed into the Moon
as well. (More space race trivia: It was supposed to bring back lunar soil
samples before Apollo 11 returned to Earth. Armstrong and Aldrin were on the
surface of the Moon when Luna 15 impacted.)

Luna 16 was the first unmanned probe to successfully land on the Moon and
return a soil sample (which is an event even rarer than manned moon landings).

Luna 17, which carried the Lunokhod 1 roboter mentioned in the artcile landed
successfully as well.

Luna 18 (another planned soil return) crashed, Luna 19 successfully orbited
the Moon for a year and later crashed into the Moon.

Luna 21 also soft-landed carrying Lunokhod 2, the second roboter mentioned in
the article.

Luna 22 and Luna 23 were also soil return probes, but Luna 22 crashed and Luna
23 damaged the return probe on landing (the landing was a soft-landing
though).

Luna 20 and 24 both successfully landed on the Moon and returned to Earth with
soil samples, making Luna 24 the last man-made object to return from the Moon
to Earh.

0: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_man-
made_objects_on_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_man-
made_objects_on_the_Moon)

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masklinn
> Your comment incorrectly states that Luna 1-15 crashed into the moon.

Not exactly. It incorrectly states that all luna _landers_ (therefore landing
attempts) resulted in crashes, not that all luna missions preceding 16 were or
contained landers.

Thank you for the correction on 9 and 13, though, I had forgotten about them.

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soult
My bad, I misread your comment as "It took 15 tries to land on the moon".

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masklinn
Fair enough. No harm done.

