Japan and China each launched their first satellites in 1970, bringing the total number of nations with independent launch capability to five.
Apollo 13 was launched; after suffering an explosion in deep space it had to circumnavigate the moon and use the LM as a life boat. Apollo 13 was a successful disaster in which the crew survived. The Soviet space program continued its Luna program with
Luna 17
''LOK Luna 17'' (Ye-8 series) was an unmanned space mission of the Luna program, also called ''Lunik 17''. It deployed the first robotic rover onto the surface of the Moon.
Launch
''Luna 17'' was launched from an Earth parking orbit towards ...
, which delivered the robotic
Lunokhod 1 rover to the lunar surface, and
Luna 16, which achieved the first
uncrewed lunar
sample return. The Soviets also continued the success of the Venera Venus probes with
Venera 7, the first man-made spacecraft to successfully land on another planet and to transmit data back to Earth, though it only survived 23 minutes on the surface.
Launches
This is a list of
spaceflight
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in or ...
s launched in 1970.
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February
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March
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April
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June
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September
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October
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December
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Launches from the Moon
Deep Space Rendezvous
References
Footnotes
{{Orbital launches in 1970
Spaceflight by year