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| A Zond 7 launch cover postmarked at Tartu with a hand cancel on August 8, 1969, one day after the spacecraft’s launch. |
Zond 7 was an unmanned Soviet circumlunar mission launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on August 7, 1969, just three weeks after the successful Apollo 11 lunar landing. It was part of the Soviet L1/Zond program, which was developing the spacecraft and procedures needed to eventually send cosmonauts around the Moon and safely return them to Earth. The Zond spacecraft was essentially a modified Soyuz designed for circumlunar flight. The spacecraft carried a biological payload, including four steppe tortoises, as well as radiation detectors and photographic equipment. It also carried a human-tissue-equivalent phantom equipped with radiation detectors to measure the radiation exposure that a future crew might experience during a lunar mission.
After a mid-course correction on August 8, Zond 7 photographed Earth on August 9. On August 11, it passed around the far side of the Moon at a distance of roughly 2,000 km. During two photographic sessions, it obtained color and black-and-white images of the Moon and Earth, including the striking Earthrise view showing Earth above the lunar horizon. The spacecraft's photography was one of the mission's major accomplishments. Zond 7 took 35 photographs using its SKD camera, including images of Earth and the lunar surface from different distances.
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| A Zond 7 recovery cover postmarked at Tartu with a hand cancel on August 15, 1969, one day after the spacecraft’s recovery. |
Following its lunar flyby, Zond 7 began its return journey. The spacecraft successfully performed a skip-reentry maneuver, using the atmosphere to reduce its velocity before making its final descent. It reentered Earth's atmosphere and made a soft landing on August 14, 1969, in a designated recovery area south of Kustanai (now Kostanay), Kazakhstan.
