More than a year after Americans set foot on the moon in 1969, the Soviets landed the worlds first remote “rover” type vehicle ever to explore the surface of another world. One almost has to wonder how the politics of this mission even played out to bother even letting it continue. It would hardly seem worthwhile sending a robot to do the work actual humans would be conducting 5 more additional times beyond the historic Apollo 11 landing from the year previous.
The rover was named “Lunokhod” and translated means, “Moon Walker”, it carried out a mission for 11 days and traveled 10.5 km. Despite the fact that nobody knows exactly where the rover rests today, the rover and lander were sold at auction in 1993 for $68,500. The auction catalog read that it was, “resting on the surface of the moon”.