SPEEDING toward their dramatic rendezvous with the moon last week, the Apollo 11 astronauts were aware that they would have company in the lunar neighborhood. With the aid of periodic news reports from Houston, they were able to keep track of the progress of Luna 15, the unmanned Soviet moon probe launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome three days before their blast-off from Cape Kennedy. The Russians cloaked Luna's mission in characteristic secrecy. Some scientists speculated that it was a "scoopy" shot designed to dig up some lunar soil and return it to earth before a manned Apollo mission could accomplish the feat. Others thought it might be a "snoopy" shot aimed merely at orbiting the moon and returning with photographs and telemetered data. Many Westerners suggested that it was, above all, a sour-grapes shot.
For months before Luna 15 was launched, rumors had circulated in Moscow that Soviet scientists would in one way or another try to steal some thunder from Apollo. Speculation intensified last month when Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov told Japanese newsmen that he expected his country to exhibit rocks from the moon—gathered by an unmanned spacecraft—at the 1970 world's fair in Osaka. Three weeks ago, reports were heard in Moscow that two earlier versions of Luna 15 had exploded prematurely—one on the launch pad early in April, the other shortly after launch on June 12.
First details of the Russian shot came not from Moscow but from the irrepressible English astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell. "Listening to Apollo with one ear and Luna with the other," as Lovell put it, he tracked the loudly signaling Soviet ship with the 250-ft. Jodrell Bank radio telescope. Soon after launch, he determined that the spacecraft was traveling more slowly than previous Russian moon shots, was on a different trajectory and was transmitting "heaps" of information with a new kind of signal that he could not interpret. The slower velocity indicated to Lovell that the Russians were trying to economize on fuel, perhaps saving it for a landing and subsequent blast-off from the lunar surface. This, he suggested, "supports the theory that Luna 15 may attempt to recover lunar rock."
After Luna 15 reached the vicinity of the moon, it went into an 83-by 179-mi. orbit. On that basis, Lovell predicted that the Russians would attempt "to land the whole spacecraft, or part of it, and collect some rock." Most Western scientists, however, doubted that such a feat could be brought off successfully on the first try. They know that the Soviets have not yet even tested a rocket large enough to launch a Luna with enough fuel to land on the moon and take off again. They also believe that Russian space techniques are still not sophisticated enough to detach a craft from the orbiting Luna, land it and launch it again to rendezvous with the mother ship for the return trip to earth.