November 15

If there had been just a little more traffic, today’s entry would have had to appear tomorrow. At 10:00 p.m. GMT on the 15th in 1970, the Soviet Spacecraft Luna 17 slipped in to orbit around the Moon. Carried onboard was the Lunokhod 1, a really neat remote control car, which would land on the Moon on November 17. Actually, it was a bit too odd looking to be called a car. Calling it an RC car does get the point across though. Well, maybe not a car, it looked more like someone polished off all the Vodka in the liquor cabinet and then got in to their kid’s erector set. If you look at it very closely, it becomes clear that it was a miniature laboratory. O.K., maybe it’s not the Dr. Frankenstein kind of laboratory, but it is a laboratory nonetheless. The Lunokhod 1’s significance, however, lies in the fact that it was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on a planetary body other than Earth. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying it was the first rover made by humans. That would be both accurate and leave the door open for new evidence that may be coming out of Area 51 once everything there is de-classified.

Lunokhod means Moon Walker in Russian.