The remarkable rediscovery of Lunokhod 1: How a Soviet rover's reflector answered Earth after 40 years of silence

Summary

The article recounts the story of Lunokhod 1, the Soviet Union's first robotic lunar rover that landed on the Moon in 1970 and operated for nearly a year before going silent in 1971. Nearly four decades later, scientists successfully bounced a laser pulse off the rover's retroreflector, demonstrating that the device was still functional. The article explores the engineering achievement of the Soviet lunar program, the rover's design and mission, and the remarkable rediscovery of its reflector by a team of scientists using NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and ground-based laser experiments.