Luna 11

Luna 11 was an unmanned space mission of the Luna program, also called Lunik 11. Luna 11 was launched towards the Moon from an earth-orbiting platform and entered lunar orbit on August 28, 1966. The objectives of the mission included the study of:

1. lunar gamma- and X-ray emissions in order to determine the Moon's chemical composition;
2. lunar gravitational anomalies;
3. the concentration of meteorite streams near the Moon; and,
4. the intensity of hard corpuscular radiation near the Moon.

A total of 137 radio transmissions and 277 orbits of the Moon were completed before the batteries failed on October 1, 1966.

• Launch Date/Time: 1966-08-24 at 08:09:00 UTC
• On-orbit dry mass: 3616 kg