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uniliening Magoo's Soviet Soviet Hello, God, Hello and welcome. This is Michael Anus, and're listening to episode 291 of the space rocket history podcast. And now, Space 1970, Luna 16 and 17.

Luna 16, also known as Lunic 16, was an unmanned robotic moon landing mission that was part of the Soviet Luna program.

You may recall from previous episodes that in the Soviet Union the highest ranking political leadership viewed success in space as an effective

factor of ideological influence on its people and the peoples of the Warsaw Pact.

Khrushchev's administration secured indisputable superiority for the Soviet Union in space exploration

and in the process embarrassed

the most powerful nation in the free world, the United States. But during Brezhnev's administration,

these achievements in the arena of space were surpassed by the U.S. The Soviet goal of landing a

cosmonaut on the moon by April of 1969 to coincide with the 100th

...