Zond 7

Zond 7, a member of the Soviet Union's Zond program and the only truly successful test of the Soyuz 7K-L1, was launched towards the Moon from a mother spacecraft (69-067B) on a mission of further studies of the Moon and circumlunar space, to obtain color photography of Earth and the Moon from varying distances, and to flight test the spacecraft systems. Earth photos were obtained on August 9, 1969. On August 11, 1969, the spacecraft flew past the Moon at a distance of 1984.6 km and conducted two picture taking sessions. Zond 7 reentered Earth's atmosphere on August 14, 1969, and achieved a soft landing in a preset region south of Kustanai, Kazakhstan.

Zond 7 used a relatively uncommon technique called "skip reentry" to shed velocity upon returning to Earth.

*Launch Date/Time: 1969-08-07 at 23:48:06 UTC
*On-orbit dry mass: 5979 kg

External links

* [http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm Soviet Lunar Images]

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"This article was originally based on material from [http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1969-067A NASA (NSSDC) information on Zond 7] "