Russian Spacecraft on Moon First

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 a Manchester University 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.   

In July 1969, the telescopes at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in Cheshire, England, were tracking the American Eagle Lander carrying astronauts towards the moon's surface. Astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space. He 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. In the newly released recordings, which were made over three days, Sir Bernard, the founder of Jodrell Bank, can be heard narrating events with conversation from the Apollo 11 astronauts in the background, MosNews reports.

Secret and hidden: naturally. Since the Soviet Union put the first spacecraft in outer space and the first man in space, it didn't seem logical that they would not win the race to the moon and evidently they did.

Luna 15, launched three days before the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, was the third Soviet attempt to recover and bring lunar soil back to Earth. In a race to reach the Moon and return to Earth, the parallel missions of Luna 15 and Apollo 11 were, in some ways, the culmination of the Moon race that defined the space programs of both the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

After a midcourse correction the day after launch, Luna 15 entered lunar orbit at 10:00 UT on 17 July 1969. The spacecraft remained in lunar orbit for two days while controllers checked all onboard systems and performed two orbital maneuvers. And the rest was detailed in the article.

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