LK (spacecraft)

The LK, short for Lunniy korabl or lunar craft, was the Soviet single-seat lunar lander meant to put one cosmonaut on the Moon before the Americans, and the Russian counterpart of the Apollo Lunar Module. Korolev's OKB-1 managed the project, while Yangel's OKB-586 in Dnepropetrovsk designed and built the Block E engine system. Because the N1 rocket could send only about 70 percent of the Saturn V payload toward the Moon, the LK weighed about a third of the American module, carried a crew of one and had no docking tunnel, so the cosmonaut would spacewalk across to the LOK orbiter. A Block D stage was to brake it out of lunar orbit, after which the Block E stage would land it and later serve as the ascent stage, leaving the landing gear behind. The LK was test flown very successfully in Earth orbit between 1970 and 1971, but it never reached the Moon because the N1 never had a successful flight.