// SPACE.COM — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
On this day in space! Oct. 20, 1970: The Soviet Union launches last-ever Zond moon mission
Zond 8 flew a loop around the moon without a crew, but did capture stunning camera views of Earth and the moon together.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
On Oct. 20, 1970, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 8 spacecraft on a mission to the moon. This was the last mission in the Zond program.
After the first three Zond missions explored Venus and Mars, the next ones were circumlunar missions that flew around the moon before returning to Earth. Although there was no crew on board, the Zond spacecraft was designed with cosmonauts in mind.
The Zond missions served as test flights for the Soviet Union's plans to send cosmonauts to the moon. But those plans for crewed flights never came to fruition. This was partly because the U.S. had already put astronauts on the moon, but also because the Zond missions had a lot of technical problems.
Zond 8 was considered a success — even though its guidance system malfunctioned on the way back to Earth. The spacecraft still returned to Earth safely and splashed down in the Indian Ocean one week after it launched.
While the Zond 1 and Zond 2 missions were launched toward Venus and Mars, respectively, the primary target of most Zond missions was the moon. At the time, the Soviet Union was embroiled in an ongoing space race with the United States to be the first on the moon with a human crew.
By the time Zond 8 launched on Oct. 20, 1970, that space race was lost to the Soviet Union. NASA and the U.S. had already landed astronauts on the moon twice with Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 (in July and November of 1969, respectively), and even peformed the first space rescue fo the Apollo 13 astronauts in April 1970.
While Zond 8 was uncrewed, it was a test flight of the Soviet Union's L1 spacecraft that was designed to fly a cosmonaut around the moon. It looped around the moon in a lunar flyby, approaching within 1,120 kilometers of the moon's surface at its closest point, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com.
Cameras on Zond 8 captured stunning views of the Earth and moon, recreating the iconic Earthrise views seen by Apollo 8 astronauts two years earlier in 1968.