Saturday, March 17, 2012

Revisiting The First Rover

Revisiting The First Rover:

LROC image of Lunokhod 1 at rest in Mare Imbrium (NASA/GSFC/ASU)
Before there was Curiosity, before Spirit, and Opportunity, and even long before Sojourner, there was Lunokhod 1, the Soviet Union’s lunar rover that explored Mare Imbrium from November of 1970 to September the following year. It was a curious-looking machine, a steampunk fantasy reminiscent of something out of a Jules Verne novel. But until the Mars Exploration Rovers nearly 40 years later, Lunokhod 1 held the record for the longest-operating robotic rover on the surface of another world.
These images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) are the most detailed yet of the now-silent Soviet rover and its lander, Luna 17.


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