🌕 On April 3, 1966, at 9:44 p.m. Moscow time, the Soviet automatic interplanetary station Luna 10 fired its braking engine at a distance of 8,000 kilometers from the lunar surface, slowed down, and entered orbit around the Moon — the first time in human history that this had been achieved.
Launched from Baikonur on March 31, 1966 aboard a Molniya-M carrier rocket, the station spent three days in flight. The success of Soviet space exploration was reported to the country’s top leadership right in the middle of the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
🚀 The following day, April 4, delegates at the congress greeted the news of Luna 10 with applause — and beneath the hall’s vaulted ceiling, The Internationale began to play, transmitted directly from lunar orbit by the spacecraft itself. It was a brilliant propaganda gesture, showcasing the power of Soviet science at the height of the space race with the United States.
On board Luna 10 was scientific equipment for studying the Moon’s magnetic field, radiation environment, and micrometeorite fluxes in near-lunar space.
📡 During 56 days of active operation, the station completed 460 orbits around the Moon, carried out 219 radio sessions with Earth, and traveled about 7 million kilometers.
On May 30, 1966, after exhausting its battery charge, Luna 10 crashed onto the surface of Earth’s natural satellite. It carried no solar panels — the designers sacrificed them in favor of scientific instruments, which made it possible to obtain fundamentally new data about the nature of the Moon.
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