From the Archives | April 12, 1968: Luna 14 put in orbit round moon

Russia’s Luna-14 space capsule went into orbit around the moon last night [April 10], the fourth Soviet moon probe to do so, it was announced here [Moscow] to-day [April 11]. The official Tass news agency said the instrument-packed craft was studying the moon’s gravitational field, the stability of radio signals and radiation from the sun. There was no indication that it would take photographs of the lunar surface, as earlier Soviet and American moon probes have done. Two Soviet scientists, writing in the current issue of the magazine “Aviation and Cosmonautics,” indicated that a return trip by an unmanned satellite was one of the stages in the nine-year-old Soviet programme to land a man on the moon. Although Luna-14 now appears not to be part of that stage, observers said it was still just possible that an attempt would be made to bring it out of orbit to return the 385,000 kilometres back to earth. The craft is now circling the moon once every two hours and 40 minutes at a height ranging from 160 kilometres to 870 kilometres above the lunar surface. Tass said it had entered smoothly into its orbit and that all its systems were functioning normally. The craft, the first Soviet moon shot in 15 months, was sent up from a secret launching site on Monday [April 8].