Mission Summary
Luna 13 was the second spacecraft to land softly on the Moon and the first to study the lunar soil directly with instruments. Launched December 21, 1966, it followed the landmark touchdown of Luna 9 with a heavier, better-equipped lander built to probe the surface rather than simply photograph it.
After a course correction on December 22, the probe fired its retro-rocket about 70 kilometers above the surface and settled onto the Ocean of Storms on December 24, coming down between the Krafft and Seleucus craters, some 440 kilometers from Luna 9. Two spring-loaded booms then swung out from the lander, one carrying a penetrometer that a small rocket charge drove into the soil, the other a radiation densitometer.
Together the instruments measured the strength and density of the regolith, found to be about 0.8 grams per cubic centimeter, confirming that the surface could bear a substantial weight. Luna 13 returned five panoramas of terrain smoother than the ground Luna 9 had seen, and it worked until its batteries were exhausted on December 28, 1966.
Sources and notes can be found on the Sources page.
