Lunokhod 1

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Lunokhod 1 was the first wheeled vehicle to drive across another world. Delivered to Mare Imbrium by the Luna 17 lander on 17 November 1970, the bathtub-shaped, eight-wheeled rover was operated not by anyone aboard but by a five-person team seated at consoles back on Earth, who steered it by watching slow television pictures and contending with the roughly 2.5-second round-trip delay of radio signals. Its convex lid, studded with solar cells, opened by day to charge the batteries and closed by night, while a small polonium-210 radioisotope heater kept its electronics from freezing through the fortnight-long lunar night. Designed to last three months, Lunokhod 1 worked for nearly eleven, surviving eleven lunar nights. Over that time it covered about 10.5 kilometres, returned more than 20,000 television images and 200 panoramas, and analysed the soil at hundreds of points with a penetrometer and an X-ray spectrometer. It also carried a French-built laser reflector that is still ranged from Earth today, helping measure the Moon's distance to within centimetres. The rover finally fell silent in the autumn of 1971, after its heat source decayed, but it had proved that machines could be sent to explore other worlds — a lineage that runs straight to the Mars rovers.

1. 1970Launch aboard Luna 17Launch

   The rover departs Earth folded atop the Luna 17 lander.

2. 1970Arrival in Mare ImbriumLanding

   Luna 17 lands and Lunokhod 1 rolls down a ramp — the first wheeled vehicle on another world.

3. 1971Months of remote drivingMilestone

   Steered from Earth, it covers ~10.5 km over eleven lunar days and returns 20,000+ images.

4. 1971Mission concludedMission end

   After its radioisotope heater decays, the rover falls silent; its laser reflector is still used.

Images

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