USSR. Zond 7. This was the only truly successful mission of the Lunar Module L1, launched with a Proton, to perform a moon flyby. The first (color) photos arrived on August 9th, and the flyby was completed on August 11th. It then returned to Earth on August 14th and landed successfully in Kazakhstan. This paved the way for the manned Zond 8, for a trip around the Moon in December 1969, for the centenary of Lenin’s birth. Discussions dragged on for a while, but then the political decision was made not to do it, since the Americans had already done it and the chances of something going wrong were very high. Zond 8 then flew in December 1970, but without humans. Zond-5 had already flown in 1968 with turtles, flies, onions, wheat, and microbes. Upon return, everything was fine, just some radiation damage to the wheat, and the turtles were hungry…
