Notes from the launch
Thirteen days before Apollo 11 lifted off from Kennedy, the Soviet Union destroyed its own lunar launch pad.
On 3 July 1969, in the late evening Moscow time, the second N1 — serial 5L — rose from Pad 110/East at Baikonur carrying the unmanned Zond L1S-2 lunar spacecraft. A quarter-second after liftoff, the turbopump in engine number 8 exploded, severing propellant lines and igniting a fire through the first stage.
The vehicle tilted and fell back onto the pad. Approximately 2,300 tonnes of propellant detonated in one of the largest accidental non-nuclear explosions in history; debris scattered up to ten kilometres away.
Launch Complex 110/East was destroyed. Reconstruction took roughly two years — long enough that the N1 program never recovered its momentum. The three flights that followed all failed before reaching orbit, and the program was cancelled in 1976.
Payload