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–Soyuz Test Project Command/Service Module (CSM) with a Soviet Soyuz 7K-TM spacecraft. Although the Soyuz was given a mission designation number (Soyuz 19) as part of the ongoing Soyuz program, its radio call sign was simply "Soyuz" for the duration of the joint mission. The Apollo mission was not a numbered mission of the Apollo program, and similarly bore the call sign "Apollo". Despite this, some of the press and a few NASA web pages have referred to the mission as "Apollo 18", but this should not be confused with the canceled lunar mission. The Apollo spacecraft was launched with a docking module