1970 in spaceflight 1970 in spaceflight Japan and China each launched their first satellites in 1970, bringing the total number of nations with independent launch capability to five. Apollo 13 was launched; after suffering an explosion in deep space it had to circumnavigate the moon and use the LM as a life boat. Apollo 13 was a successful disaster in which the crew survived. The Soviet space program continued its Luna program with Luna 17, which delivered the robotic Lunokhod 1 rover to the lunar surface, and Luna 16, which achieved the first unmanned lunar sample return. The Soviets also continued the success
Apollo program That was one of the biggest investment of the US in science, research and development, and employed thousands of American scientists. A single Saturn V launch in 1969 cost up to $375 million, compared to the National Science Foundation's fiscal year 1970 budget of $440 million. In 2009, NASA held a symposium on project costs which presented an estimate of the Apollo program costs in 2005 dollars as roughly $170 billion ($ in dollars). This included all research and development costs; the procurement of 15 Saturn V rockets, 16 command and service modules, 12 lunar modules, plus program support and