Even before the Kennedy Moon landing challenge, the Soviets
had the idea of sending cosmonauts into a loop around the Moon. After the
Kennedy announcement, Soviiet lunar efforts moved into high gear.
By 1965, the Soviet effort had been split into two. The
first was the L1 program which was designed to send cosmonauts into a looping
trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth. The unmanned precursors of this
effort was known as the Zond (Russian for “probe”), but the manned version was
never flown.
The second effort was dubbed the N1-L3. A Soviet vehicle
consisting of a a translunar boost stage, an upper stage to brake into lunar
orbit, a lunar orbiter, and a lunar lander would be launched by the massive
launch vehicle known as the N1. Two cosmonauts would travel to the Moon, one
remaining in orbit, and the other executing the landing. Serious problems with
the N1 booster, which tended to blow up on launch, precluded any Soviet lunar
mission. The last N1 launch attempt occurred in November, 1972 with the total
loss of the vehicle due to an explosion.
The Soviets did conduct a more advance lunar project, called
L3M, which would have used the N1, once perfected, to land large modules on the
Moon for long term exploration. But the Soviet government cancelled the program
in 1974 in the belief that it made no point to land cosmonauts on the Moon
since the Americans had already won the Moon race.
Zond 7
Zond 7 was launched on August 7th, 1969, flew past the Moon in
August 11th, and landed on Earth on August 14th. It
conducted two photography sessions during its flight.
Apollo 12
Apollo 12 was launched on November 14th, 1969, landed in the Ocean
of Storms on November 19th
and returned to Earth on November 24th. Her crew consisted of Pete
Conrad, mission commander, Richard Gordon, command module pilot, and Alan Bean,
lunar module pilot. The command and service module was named the Yankee
Clipper. The lunar module was named the Intrepid. While on the lunar surface,
the crew retrieved parts of the unmanned Surveyor 3, which had landed on the
Moon in April 1967 deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package
(ALSEP) deployed, and gathered numerous soil and rock samples.