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> The Soviets were ahead with respect to earth orbit. Soviets were the first to land on another planet orbiting the sun, Venus. While the moon orbits earth.
by freeflight 5y ago
> The Soviets were ahead with respect to earth orbit.
Soviets were the first to land on another planet orbiting the sun, Venus.
While the moon orbits earth.
- ghaff 5y agoI was specifically commenting on manned flight but, yes, the Soviets had a rocketry lead that also allowed them to take the first pictures of the far side of the moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3 which is an interesting story of its own. (Basically they shot the photos on film and faxed them back to earth.) But they couldn't get the bigger rocket needed to send and return cosmonauts to and from the moon working.
- KuiN 5y agoSoviet Mars 3 was also the first probe to achieve soft landing on Mars. Like most of the Soviet Mars missions, it failed, but it failed only after landing (unlike most of the rest ...).
- eps 5y agoAn urban legend goes that at least two Soviet Mars probes missed the planet because of a typo in the nav program. The code was in Fortran and one of the commas was mistyped as a dot (or vice verse).