Luna E-8 No.201, also known as Luna Ye-8 No.201, and sometimes identified by NASA as Luna 1969A, was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1969. It was a

Luna E-8 Luna commonly refers to: * Earth's Moon, named "Luna" in Latin * Luna (goddess), the ancient Roman personification of the Moon Luna may also refer to: Places Philippines * Luna, Apayao * Luna, Isabela * Luna, La Union * Luna, San Jose Romani ...

spacecraft, the first of three to be launched, It was intended to perform a

soft landing Soft landing may refer to: *Soft landing (aeronautics) A soft landing is any type of aircraft, rocket or spacecraft landing that does not result in significant damage to or destruction of the vehicle or its payload, as opposed to a hard la ...

on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, in order to deploy a

Lunokhod Lunokhod ( rus, Луноход, p=lʊnɐˈxot, "Moonwalker") was a series of Soviet robotic lunar rovers designed to land on the Moon between 1969 and 1977. Lunokhod 1 was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on an extraterrestrial ...

rover onto the surface. It carried the Lunokhod No.201 rover.

Launch

Luna E-8 No.201 was launched at 06:48:15 UTC on 19 February 1969 atop a

Proton-K The Proton-K, also designated Proton 8K82K after its GRAU index or SL-12 after its model number, 8K82K, was a Russian, previously Soviet, carrier rocket derived from the earlier Proton. It was built by Khrunichev, and launched from sites 81 an ...

8K78K

carrier rocket A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and syste ...

with a

Blok D Blok D (russian: Блок Д meaning Block D) is an upper stage used on Soviet and later Russian expendable launch systems, including the N1, Proton-K and Zenit. The stage (and its derivatives) has been included in more than 320 launched r ...

upper stage, flying from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 81/24. The payload shroud collapsed at T+51 seconds as the booster was passing through the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure and debris struck the Proton's external N2O2 tanks at high speed, puncturing them and allowing oxidizer to spill out and ignite on contact with the engine exhaust, resulting in the explosion of the first stage. The upper stages were blasted free and eventually impacted the ground. It was determined that the failure was due to a design flaw in the untested new payload shroud developed for the launch. The Russian documentary ''Project E-8'' includes a film clip of the ill-fated launch. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempt to deploy a rover onto the lunar surface.

References

Spacecraft launched in 1969 Luna programme {{USSR-spacecraft-stub