The N1 rocket's fourth failure ends the Soviet Moon programme
1972 · Event
The giant N1 — the Soviet Saturn V — explodes on its fourth and final test, seconds from a clean flight. With the Americans already five landings deep, Moscow quietly cancels the programme eighteen months later and pretends it never raced for the Moon at all. The secret holds until 1989.
On these timelines: The Space Race, Russia & the USSR, Master
More from The Space Race
- Apollo 11 moon landing (1969)
- Sputnik launch (1957)
- Yuri Gagarin: first human in space (1961)
- Apollo program announcement (1961)
- Kennedy's 'We choose to go to the Moon' speech (1962)
- 'One small step': the Moonwalk broadcast (1969)
- Apollo 17 leaves the Moon (1972)
- Gemini 6 and 7 rendezvous in orbit (1965)
Around 1972
- Prague Spring (1968)
- The Troubles (1968)
- Iranian Revolution (1978)
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
- Vietnam War (American phase) (1965)
- Watergate scandal (1972)
- Six-Day War (1967)
- Yom Kippur War (1973)
- Birth of hip-hop (1973)
- Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)