Soviets Raced to Land on Moon, Photos Reveal

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sunday released what are believed to be the first Western photographs of Soviet equipment designed to land on the moon, which scientists cited as firm evidence that the Soviet Union had been racing the United States to put a human on the moon.

“The existence of this hardware is perhaps the most conclusive evidence to date that there was, in fact, a race to the moon and that the Soviet Union had a concrete plan to land cosmonauts there in the 1960s,” said Edward Crawley, an MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

The equipment, a Soviet lunar landing craft and return-to-Earth module, were never used because the Russians failed to overcome problems with the N1 booster rockets that were needed to carry the vessels aloft, Crawley said.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin became the first men to land on the moon in July, 1969, and the Soviet lunar craft were apparently ready a year before that.

Although there had been circumstantial evidence the Soviets had developed such equipment, it had never been seen by Western scientists and there had been widespread skepticism that the “moon race” actually existed, Crawley said.

The MIT scientists saw and photographed the equipment last month during a weeklong visit to the Moscow Aviation Institute to arrange an exchange of students and faculty between MIT and the Soviet educational institute, he said.