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:
- lunar gamma- and X-ray emissions in order to determine the Moon's chemical composition;
- lunar gravitational anomalies;
- the concentration of meteorite streams near the Moon; and,
- 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