On this day in space! Oct. 20, 1970: The Soviet Union launches last-ever Zond moon mission

On this day in space! Oct. 20, 1970: The Soviet Union launches last-ever Zond moon mission Zond 8 flew a loop around the moon without a crew, but did capture stunning camera views of Earth and the moon together. On Oct. 20, 1970, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 8 spacecraft on a mission to the moon. This was the last mission in the Zond program. After the first three Zond missions explored Venus and Mars, the next ones were circumlunar missions that flew around the moon before returning to Earth. Although there was no crew on board, the Zond spacecraft was designed with cosmonauts in mind. The Zond missions served as test flights for the Soviet Union's plans to send cosmonauts to the moon. But those plans for crewed flights never came to fruition. This was partly because the U.S. had already put astronauts on the moon, but also because the Zond missions had a lot of technical problems. Zond 8 was considered a success — even though its guidance system malfunctioned on the way back to Earth. The spacecraft still returned to Earth safely and splashed down in the Indian Ocean one week after it launched. Why it mattered While the Zond 1 and Zond 2 missions were launched toward Venus and Mars, respectively, the primary target of most Zond missions was the moon. At the time, the Soviet Union was embroiled in an ongoing space race with the United States to be the first on the moon with a human crew. By the time Zond 8 launched on Oct. 20, 1970, that space race was lost to the Soviet Union. NASA and the U.S. had already landed astronauts on the moon twice with Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 (in July and November of 1969, respectively), and even peformed the first space rescue fo the Apollo 13 astronauts in April 1970. While Zond 8 was uncrewed, it was a test flight of the Soviet Union's L1 spacecraft that was designed to fly a cosmonaut around the moon. It looped around the moon in a lunar flyby, approaching within 1,120 kilometers of the moon's surface at its closest point, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. Cameras on Zond 8 captured stunning views of the Earth and moon, recreating the iconic Earthrise views seen by Apollo 8 astronauts two years earlier in 1968. Zond 8 ultimately splashed down in the Indian Ocean on Oct. 27, 1970 after a solar attitude sensor failed, sending it on a shorter, steeper reentry path during landing, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. It was retrieved by a recovery ship, marking the end of the Soviet moon landing program. Russian would go on to develop a series of Salyut space stations, culminating in the long-lived Mir space station. After decades without a moon probe, Russia did launch a new uncrewed moon lander in 2023. That Luna 25 mission failed and crashed into the lunar surface after an onboard engine controller malfunctioned. The country has pledged a return to the moon in 2027. Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube. Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. - Tariq Malik Editor-in-Chief You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. [Image text:] NOO002 3,15