The Soviet Union had the capability to round the Moon before Apollo
the verdict
SUPPORTED
the evidence backs this
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
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AS REPORTEDno primary record reached; this is what the reporting says
Historical evidence confirms that the Soviet Union had active lunar programs, including plans and hardware intended to send cosmonauts to loop around the Moon during the Space Race era.
The Soviet space program (Russian: Космическая программа СССР, romanized: Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR) was the state space program of the Soviet Union, active from 1951 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unlike its Space Race competitor, the United States, which consolidated its space program under NASA, the Soviet space program was divided between several competing design bureaus
The Soviets were beaten in sending the first crewed flight around the Moon in 1968 by Apollo 8, but Mishin pressed ahead with development of the flawed super heavy N1, in the hope that the Americans would have a setback, leaving enough time to make the N1 workable and land a man on the Moon first. There was a success with the joint flight of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 in January 1969 that tested the rendezvous, docking, and crew transfer techniques that would be used for the landing, and the LK lander was tested successfully in earth orbit. But after four uncrewed test launches of the N1 ended in failure, the program was suspended for two years and then cancelled, removing any chance of the Soviets landing men on the Moon before the United States.
Besides the crewed landings, the abandoned Soviet Moon program included the multipurpose Moon base Zvezda, first detailed with developed mockups of expedition vehicles and surface modules.
Following this setback, Chelomey convinced Ustinov to approve a program in 1970 to advance his Almaz military space station as a means of beating the US's announced Skylab. Mishin remained in control of the project that became Salyut but the decision backed by Mishin to fly a three-man crew without pressure suits rather than a two-man crew with suits to…
In 1969, Luna 15 was an intended lunar sample return mission, however resulted in a crash landing. In 1970 however Luna 16 became the first robotic probe to land on the Moon and return a surface sample, having drilled 35 cm into the surface, to Earth and represented the first lunar sample return mission by the Soviet Union and the third overall, having followed the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 crewed missions.
Luna 17, and Luna 21 delivered rovers onto the surface of the Moon. Luna 20 and Luna 24 were other successful sample return missions. Luna 18 and Luna 23 resulted in crash landings.
In total there were 24 missions in the Luna Programme, 15 were considered to be successful, including four hard landings and three soft landings, six orbits, and two flybys. The programme was continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Russian federation space agency launched Luna 25 in 2023.
First to the Moon: Apollo 8 and the Soviet Union | National Air and Space Museum
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First to the Moon: Apollo 8 and the Soviet Union
Dec 21, 2018
By Michael Neufeld
Apollo 8 was the second flight in the Apollo program, and the first mission to take humans to the Moon and back.
In public, it appeared that the Soviet Union had a chance to beat Apollo 8 to the Moon. Failures of the Soviet Union’s Zond program were kept secret.
How much did the information about the Soviets influence NASA’s final decision to proceed with the risky Apollo 8 mission?
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the pioneering Apollo 8 mission, many commentators and news stories will assert that NASA sent Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders to the Moon to beat the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviets were planning to send two cosmonauts to loop around the Moon, but that statement of the agency’s intent is, at best, half true.
First, some background is in order. Apollo 8 was the second mission in the program to carry a crew, coming just over two months after Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham tested the Command and Service Modules (CSM) in Earth orbit—the first astronaut flight since a January 1967 launch-pad fire killed the original prime crew. The next mission after Apollo 7 was scheduled to be a combined flight of the CSM and the Lunar Module (LM—the lunar lander) in low Earth orbit. It was also to be the first human mission on the gigantic Saturn V Moon rocket, which had had a troubled second test on Apollo 6.
The result was one of the most daring and thrilling spaceflights in history. Borman, Lovell and Anders, became the first humans to leave low-Earth-orbit and fly into deep space.
Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Russell Schweickart were supposed to fly Apollo 8, but by summer 1968, troubles with the LM meant that it would slip at least a couple of months into 1969. Time was already
The Soviet Response to the Moon Landing? Denial There Was a Moon Race at All | HISTORY By: Becky Little Space Exploration The Soviet Response to the Moon Landing? Denial There Was a Moon Race at All Until 1989, Russians claimed they were not trying to reach the Moon first and that the U.S. was in “a one-nation race." Becky Little Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images Published: July 11, 2019 Last Updated: May 28, 2025 You’ve probably heard of conspiracy theories that the moon landing was a hoax ( those are false, and easily debunked ). But have you heard the one about how the moon race was itself a hoax, because the Soviet Union was never trying to get to the moon in the first place? Or at least, that’s what the Soviets claimed to cover up their unsuccessful lunar-landing program. It was a lie that held fast until 1989, when a group of American aerospace engineers went to Moscow and finally saw the Soviets’ failed lunar-landing craft for themselves. President John F. Kennedy kicked off the moon race in 1961 by announcing the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. From then on, NASA’s program to reach the moon before the Soviet Union was public information. In contrast, the Soviet Union didn’t publicize its own program, or even officially admit it had one. After the U.S. reached the moon on July 20, 1969 , the Soviet Union continued its lunar-landing program into the early ‘70s while still publicly denying its existence. Did the US Go to the Moon to Beat the Soviets? Why did JFK promise to put a man on the moon? Was it just to beat the Soviets? Learn about the events that led to the creation of the Apollo Program. 4:51m watch At first, “secrecy was necessary so that no one would overtake us,” wrote journalist Yaroslav Golovanov in the Soviet newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda . “But later, when they did overtake us, we had to maintain secrecy so that no one knew that we had been overtaken.” Soviet spokesmen also said the country was more in
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