Editing Lunokhod programme (section)

==Results==
During its 322 Earth days of operations, ''[[Lunokhod 1]]'' travelled {{convert|10.5|km|mi|abbr=in|1}} and returned more than 20,000 television images and 206 high-resolution panoramas.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.planetology.ru/panoramas/lunokhod1.php?language=english |title=Lunokhod 1 Panoramas |work=planetology.ru |access-date=April 30, 2013}}</ref> In addition, it performed twenty-five soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations.

''[[Lunokhod 2]]'' operated for about four months, covered {{convert|42|km|mi|abbr=in|0}} of terrain,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.space.com/21923-soviet-moon-rover-driving-record.html |title=NASA Moon Probe Helps Revise Off-Planet Driving Record {{!}} Lunokhod 2 |work=Space.com |first=Mike |last=Wall |date=July 11, 2013 |access-date=July 12, 2013}}</ref> including driving into hilly upland areas and [[rilles]]. ''Lunokhod 2'' held the record for the longest distance of surface travel of any extraterrestrial vehicle until 2014.<ref name="autogenerated1" />  It sent back 86 panoramic images and over 80,000 television pictures. Many mechanical tests of the Moon's surface, [[laser ranging]] measurements, and other experiments were completed during this time.

In 2010, nearly forty years after the 1971 loss of signal from ''Lunokhod 1'', the [[NASA]] [[Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter]] photographed its tracks and final location, and researchers, using a telescopic pulsed-laser rangefinder, detected the robot's [[retroreflector]].<ref name="Bleicher">{{cite journal |title=Forgotten Soviet Moon Rover Beams Light Back to Earth |first=Ariel |last=Bleicher |date=August 2010 |journal=IEEE Spectrum |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/forgotten-soviet-moon-rover-beams-light-back-to-earth/0 |access-date=2011-05-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110820073007/https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/forgotten-soviet-moon-rover-beams-light-back-to-earth/0 |archive-date=2011-08-20 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Not until [[Mars Pathfinder]]'s deployment of the "[[Sojourner (rover)|Sojourner]]" Rover in 1997 was another remote-controlled vehicle put on an extraterrestrial body. For comparison, the similarly sized NASA [[Mars Exploration Rover]]s, ''[[Spirit rover|Spirit]]'' and ''[[Opportunity rover|Opportunity]]'' had, by their fifth anniversary in January 2009, traveled a total of {{convert|21|km|mi|abbr=in|0}} and transmitted over 125,000 images.<ref>{{cite press release |url=http://marsrover.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20090112a.html |publisher=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |title=Public Events Mark Mars Rovers' Five-Year Anniversary |date=January 12, 2009 |access-date=April 26, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090509102333/http://marsrover.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20090112a.html |archive-date=May 9, 2009 |url-status=dead }}</ref>