* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Luna 15 mission

Blobrana · L

Recording of Russia's lunar gatecrash attempt released.
A dramatic and previously unheard recording of the moment the Russians tried to gatecrash the American's Moon landing in 1969 have been released by The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. The recordings were made in the Control Room of the famous Jodrell Bank Observatory, where astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell and colleagues were listening to transmissions coming from the moon.

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Blobrana · L

Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans
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.

In July 1969, the telescopes at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in Cheshire, were tracking the Americans' Eagle Lander carrying astronauts towards the moon's surface.
Sir Bernard Lovell, the astronomer, was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space and began tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to collect samples of lunar soil and rock and then return to Earth before the US mission.
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 off.

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