Luna 16
The first robot to scoop up part of another world and fly it home.
Key facts
- Agency
- Soviet Union
- Type of mission
- Robotic sample return
- Target
- The Moon: Mare Fecunditatis
- Launched
- 12 September 1970
- Samples returned
- 101 g of lunar soil
- Status
- Completed 1970
Luna 16 proved that a machine could do what had so far needed astronauts. It landed on the dark lava plain of Mare Fecunditatis, the Sea of Fertility, on 20 September 1970, about a year after Apollo 11.
A hollow drill on an arm bored about 35 centimetres into the ground and pushed the soil into a sealed capsule on top of the craft. The upper stage then blasted straight back towards Earth, with no need to wait in lunar orbit or to dock with anything. Four days after launch from the Moon, the capsule parachuted onto the steppe of Kazakhstan.
What the soil showed
The 101 grams of dark grey soil came from a site far to the east of the Apollo 11 and 12 landings. It held fragments of basalt, the lava that fills the lunar seas, with less titanium than the Apollo 11 basalts, as well as glass beads and broken bits of highland rock. That showed the maria were not all made of the same lava, and that each sea had its own volcanic history.
Why it matters to meteorites
Every sample brought back by robot or astronaut gives a known starting point. When lunar meteorites began to be recognised in the 1980s, they were compared with these samples, mineral by mineral and isotope by isotope. Luna 16 also pioneered the direct-ascent design that China's Chang'e missions later improved.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 12 September 1970 | Luna 16 launched on a Proton rocket. |
| 20 September 1970 | Landed in Mare Fecunditatis and drilled about 35 cm into the soil. |
| 21 September 1970 | The return stage lifted off from the Moon. |
| 24 September 1970 | The sample capsule landed in Kazakhstan with 101 g of soil. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
Luna 16 was the first robotic spacecraft to land on another world and return a sample to Earth.
Three tiny fragments of its soil, weighing a fraction of a gram, were sold at auction in 1993 and again in 2018.