Moon landing the first Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet Moon landing program quickly unraveled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei Leonov on the Moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and then cancellation. A program of automated return vehicles was begun, in the hope of being the first to return lunar rocks. This had several failures. It eventually succeeded with Luna 16. But this had little impact, because the Apollo 11 and
Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World There have been two chess matches featuring USSR vs. Rest of the World, in 1970 and 1984, and one match Russia vs. Rest of the World, in 2002. The USSR team won the first two matches and the "Rest of the World" team won the third match. The first two matches were between a team from the USSR and a team of players from the "rest of the world". The third match (between Russia and the rest of the world) was the first to occur after the breakup of the Soviet Union, which