Promise Unfulfilled: The Soviet Unmanned Moon Programme 1969-1988*

B. Harvey. (1990), JBIS, 43, pp.395-398

Refcode: 1990.43.395

Abstract:

The Russian Luna series from 1969 to 1976 has been seen historically as a Soviet demonstration of an unmanned, automatic series of lunar vehicles that represented a viable, safe, cost-effective alternative to the American Apollo programme. This is how the USSR liked to portray the series but there is evidence that the programme represented only part of an ambitious project to explore the Moon, using a much wider range of automatic spacecraft, well into the 1980s.