Editing Luna 24 (section)

== Spacecraft ==
[[File:Луна-24 3 (24432633921) cropped.jpg|left|thumb|Model of <nowiki>''Luna 24''</nowiki> Moon lander]]
Luna 24 was based on the Ye-8-5 spacecraft body, consisting of two attached stages, an ascent stage mounted on top of a descent stage. The lander stood 3.96 meters tall and had an unfueled landed mass of 1880 kg. With a full load of fuel its launch mass was between 5600 and 5750 kg.<ref name="Display">{{cite web|url=https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1976-081A|title=Display: Luna 24 1976-081A|publisher=NASA|date=10 February 2021|access-date=17 February 2021}} {{PD-notice}}</ref>

The descent stage was the same as the Ye-8 lower stage for the Lunokhod rovers, a cylindrical body with four protruding landing legs, fuel tanks, a landing radar altimeter, and a dual descent engine complex. The main descent rocket, the KTDU-417, was a throttleable 1920 kg thrust engine used for mid-course corrections, orbit insertion, braking for descent to the surface, and to slow the craft until it reached a cutoff point which was determined by the onboard computer based on altitude and velocity. After cutoff a bank of lower thrust (210 and 350 kg) vernier jets was used for the final landing. The descent stage also acted as a launch pad for the ascent stage. The spacecraft descent stage was equipped with a television camera, radiation and temperature monitors, telecommunications equipment, and a 90 cm extendable arm with a drilling rig for the collection of a lunar soil sample. Communications were via a conical antenna at the end of a boom at 768 and 922 [[Hertz|MHz]] (downlink) and 115 MHz (uplink).<ref name=Display/>

The ascent stage was a smaller cylinder with a spherical top which replaced the Lunokhod rover and housing from the Ye-8 bus. It carried a cylindrical hermetically sealed soil sample container inside a spherical re-entry capsule, mounted on a 1920 kg thrust KRD-61 rocket. Total mass of the ascent stage was 520 kg, of which 245 kg was the [[nitric acid]] and [[Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine|UDMH]] propellant. It was 2 meters tall. The sample return cabin was 50 cm in diameter and had a mass of 39 kg. The KRD-61 could only fire once, for 53 seconds, to put it on a free return trajectory to Earth. Specific impulse of the engine was 313 seconds, it could impart a velocity of 2600–2700 m/s to the return craft.<ref name=Display/>