<div style="text-align:center"><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/03/russias-lunokhod-1-robotic-moon-bounces-back-laser-beams-after/"><img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/lunokhod-1-alt.jpg"></a></div>
Back before dubstup and chillwave there was a decade called "the nineteen seventies" which capped off a delicious space race between the US and Russia. Also, other things happened. While America was busy shipping humans up to the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/tag/moon/">moon</a>, Russia managed to get two robots up there, the Lunokhod 1 (pictured, in a photo apparently taken in 1904) and Lunokhod 2. They were lost a few years later, but have recently been rediscovered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Lunokhod 1 has been put back in use for one of its original purposes: laser ranging. A team from UC San Diego managed to get a lock on the bot and bounced 2,000 photons off the rover's laser retroreflector on their first try. They'll be using Lunokhod 1 and some Apollo-planted retroreflectors to test Earth-Moon distance at millimeter precision to test Einstein's theory of gravity.<p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both"><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/03/russias-lunokhod-1-robotic-moon-bounces-back-laser-beams-after/">Russia's Lunokhod 1 robotic moon bounces back laser beams after 40 year nap</a> originally appeared on <a href="http://www.engadget.com">Engadget</a> on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:34:00 EST. Please see our <a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/">terms for use of feeds</a>.</p><h6 style="clear:both;padding:8px 0 0 0;height:2px;font-size:1px;border:0;margin:0;padding:0"></h6><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/03/russias-lunokhod-1-robotic-moon-bounces-back-laser-beams-after/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry">Permalink</a> | <img src="http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/post_label_source.gif" alt="source"><span><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news194799697.html">PhysOrg</a></span> | <a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/19502834/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email">Email this</a> | <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/03/russias-lunokhod-1-robotic-moon-bounces-back-laser-beams-after/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry">Comments</a>
PhysOrg | Email this | Comments