Colonization of the Moon the Soviet leadership made some of its first public pronouncements about landing a man on the Moon and establishing a lunar base. Crewed exploration of the lunar surface began in 1968 when the Apollo 8 spacecraft orbited the Moon with three astronauts on board. This was mankind's first direct view of the far side. The following year, the Apollo 11 Apollo Lunar Module landed two astronauts on the Moon, proving the ability of humans to travel to the Moon, perform scientific research work there, and bring back sample materials. Additional missions to the Moon continued this exploration phase. In 1969,
First on the Moon that in this case, Soviet cosmonauts were first. The movie follows the selection and training of a small group of cosmonauts. The one who shines above the others (similar to the clear front-runners in the early historical Soviet space program) is Captain Ivan Sergeyevich Kharlamov (possibly a reference to the real-life cosmonaut Valentin Varlamov). He is helped into a space suit and loaded into the capsule, and the rocket lifts off for the Moon—but contact with it is soon lost. Most of the remainder of the film seems to follow the search for information about what happened next, as the