Luna 9 - Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

Facebook. Advances, pictures, details, comments. -- Originally uploaded on April 2, 2010 -- Luna 9 (occasionally called Lunik 9 or Lunnik 9) was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Union&Luna program. On February 3, 1966 the Luna 9 spacecraft was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth. For unknown reasons, the pictures from Luna 9 were not released immediately by the Soviet authorities. Instead, the Jodrell Bank Observatory, which was monitoring the craft, noticed that the signal format used was identical to the internationally-agreed system used by newspapers for transmitting pictures. The Daily Express rushed a suitable receiver to the Observatory and the pictures from Luna 9 were decoded and published world-wide.