Think the US won the Cold War by visiting the moon? And not without reason. But even Americans themselves sometimes think differently. And it is also not without reason. Soviet unmanned vehicles were there long before Neil Armstrong took his giant step. As part of the London exhibition of Soviet spacecraft and in honor of the 50th anniversary of the landing on the moon, BBC correspondent Richard Hollingham investigated the question: who really won the lunar race?
A few minutes before 10 p.m. Houston time on July 20, 1969, television stations interrupted their broadcasts to provide historical news.
The words "Live from the Moon" appear on the screen, and the picture flickers to reveal a metal staircase against a dusty monochrome landscape. A boot appears in the field of view: this is the astronaut's leg looking for support. Then he jumps out of frame.
The camera pans slowly, showing a magnificently deserted view of rocks, ridges, craters. The astronaut's voice is fuzzy. He bounces a few meters from the lander and we see him pulling a flag from a pocket in the leg of his spacesuit. It is attached to a foldable frame that unfolds; the astronaut plunges the flag into the lunar soil.
Stepping back, the first man on the moon waves to the camera. Hammer and sickle are guessed on the flag in vacuum.
This alternative version of the development of events of those times when the Soviet lunar expedition could be the first to reach the moon is not so fantastic. In February 2016, the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing is celebrated, but then the USSR could indeed become the first lunar power - and a Soviet person could be the first to set foot on the moon.
In February 1966, the Russian space probe Luna-9 performed the first controlled "soft" landing on the moon. This mission was an engineering marvel that helped answer fundamental questions about the lunar surface and paved the way for the first manned mission.
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“In the mid-1960s, Americans and the Soviets were simultaneously trying to get to the moon,” says Doug Millard, curator of space at the London Science Museum, which currently hosts an exhibition that brings together an unprecedented collection of Russian space artifacts.
“Before placing a man on the moon, you had to land a robotic apparatus, but for some reason we tend to forget all the successes of the Soviet side,” he says.
At three meters high, Luna 9 consisted of a square base with four legs - similar to the Apollo lunar module. The vertical cylinder is crowned with an ovoid dome resembling the closed petals of a flower.
Floral design
“This piece was the lander itself,” explains Millard as we study the engineering model at the booth. “When it was a meter or two from the surface, it was thrown back and four petals opened, like a child's toy - quite cleverly, in fact.”
Rather than simply announcing a landing in the Ocean of Storms on February 3, 1966, mission planners chose to take a more subtle approach to the global community.
“The images that were sent back to Earth were at a frequency that was easy to catch, which was completely deliberate,” Millard says. "The Jodrell Bank radio telescope in England received them and transmitted them to the whole world."
It seemed to readers of the newspapers of the time that Russia was rushing at full steam to victory over the Americans in the space race. The director of Jodrell Bank, distinguished radio astronomer Sir Bernadre Lovell, described the landing as a "historic moment" and added that "it was the last achievement required for a manned moon landing."
Together with the nine images sent, this mission resolved an issue that seriously bothered mission planners on both sides of the Iron Curtain. There were fears that the lunar surface was covered with deep dusty "quicksand" and any lander would sink. Luna 9 confirmed that the ground was solid, a fact that helped the Russians and Americans go further with their manned programs.
The Soviet cosmonaut's landing plan on the lunar surface was similar to the American Apollo plan. A giant rocket launches a module and a lander into the orbit of the moon. Where the Apollo spacecraft, designed for three people, had a tunnel connecting the command module and the lander, the Soviet project envisioned one module for two crew members who could carry out extravehicular activity and reach the lunar surface.
The obvious candidate for the world's first space walk was Alexei Leonov. The bulbous five-meter and powerfully folded lunar model LK-3, for which it was prepared, is also on display at the London Science Museum.
“The astronaut had to be at the helm, strapped to keep from drifting away, peering out a small window at an angle to the moon's surface as he descended,” Millard says. “You can imagine Leonov controlling the descent who had even less time to find a landing site than Neil Armstrong - so this venture could be even more dangerous than Apollo.
Beacon robot
The Soviet plan had several built-in security features that the American Apollo program lacked. The lander was not only equipped with a spare engine, but an unmanned landing module had to be sent to the moon in advance.
“It could be used in the event of a failure of Leonov's lander,” Millard says. - Also, before Leonov's disembarkation, a robotic lunar rover should have been sent, which would act as a beacon. It would also be used in case of an emergency so that the astronaut could reach the reserve module and safely return to Earth."
It was an ambitious and well thought out plan. The lunar landing was successfully completed - without a crew - in Earth orbit. And the first robotic lunar rover Lunokhod-1 - the size of a small car - went to the lunar surface in 1970.
Unfortunately for the Soviet space program, the giant N-1 rocket needed to get Leonov to the moon never made a successful launch. 105 meters tall, similar to the American Saturn-5, it was a powerful rocket. The first stage alone included 30 engines.
Completed hastily after the premature death of the chief Soviet rocket designer Sergei Korolev, the N-1 project (its engines) was never tested on the ground until the first launch in February 1969.
All four launch attempts ended in failure - the first N-1 missile lasted a minute, the second crashed onto the launch pad, the third and fourth exploded.
By this time, by 1971, the race to get a man to the moon was really lost, although the Soviet lunar program was officially canceled only in 1974.
But what should not be forgotten is that the Russian robotic probes made it to the moon first. And in January 1973, a few weeks after Gene Cernan left the last trace on the Moon, the second Soviet Lunokhod began a four-month mission to study the lunar surface and survey the Moon in high resolution.
If the N-1 rocket program began a couple of years earlier, Alexei Leonov could actually become the first person on the moon. But Millard says some people still don't believe it.
“If Leonov had become the first person on the moon, the flag would have been different, but it would still be dangling in an airless space - because as soon as you touch the flag on the moon, it will not stop dangling,” he says. "There would be the same conspiracy theories, over and over again."