

Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans - adamcrowe
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5737854/Russian-spacecraft-landed-on-moon-hours-before-Americans.html
A previously unheard recording of a Russian spacecraft attempting to beat NASA's Apollo 11 in 1969's race to the moon has been released. The recordings from Jodrell's Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 – just a few hours before the Americans lifted.
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trickjarrett
Hell, if the race was the first one to touch the moon we could have just aimed
a rocket and ended it at that. I do think it interesting that it took this
long for this recording to come to light though. Unfortunately I think it will
be all the more fodder for conspiracy theorists.

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wglb
Didn't the ranger do that?

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jlangenauer
The title is misleading - Luna 15 has long been known about, and it didn't
land on the moon before the Americans, but in fact a few hours after they
landed (as both the telegraph article and the Wikipedia entry on Luna 15
show).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_15>

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wglb
I think the headline just simply got truncated--"a few hours before the
Americans Took Off".

