The Explorers' Club, № MCLXXIV

Operation AXIOM: Destination Moon—The 50th Anniversary of Luna 24
9-22 August 1976: The Luna 24 probe lifted off from the Kazakh S.S.R.'s Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a Proton-K rocket; the probe landed on the Mare Crisium, collected regolith samples, & sealed those samples inside an ascent stage, which lifted off from the Moon & landed back in the Kazakh S.S.R.; Luna 24 was the third & final Soviet lunar sample-return mission, & the final Luna program mission*.

Commentary: Luna 24 returned one hundred seventy point one grams (170.1 g) of lunar regolith to Earth, more than Luna 16 & Luna 20 combined. The three landers returned approximately three hundred grams (300 g) of samples. By way of contrast, the six manned Apollo landings returned approximately three hundred eighty-two kilograms (382 kg; or, 382,000 g) of lunar samples.

*The final Luna program mission of the Soviet Union; the Russian Federation has a latter-day Moon exploration program, Luna-Glob ("Lunar sphere," compare lunar globe), that claims continuity with the old Soviet propgram. In August 2023, the Luna 25 lander failed, crashing into the Lunar surface.

The Waykback Machine Tour of Soviet Lunar Sample-return Missions
"The Explorers' Club," № DCCCXLII: The 51st Anniversary of Luna 16 (1970)
"The Explorers' Club," № CMXXXII: The 51st Anniversary of Luna 20 (1972)

Ex Luna, scientia.