LK-700

Mission Profile

LK-700 was a Soviet concept for a very large direct-descent lunar lander studied by Vladimir Chelomei's design bureau in the mid-1960s as an alternative to Korolev's N1-L3 lunar landing architecture. Rather than using lunar orbit rendezvous, LK-700 would have descended directly from Earth-Earth trajectory to the lunar surface using a massive propulsion system, requiring an enormous launch mass that would have needed Chelomei's UR-700 super-heavy rocket — itself an alternative to the N1. The direct landing approach required no orbital rendezvous but demanded a far larger initial mass, with a vehicle estimated to be comparable in size to a small house. The LK-700/UR-700 approach was rejected in favor of the N1-L3 in 1965 and never developed beyond preliminary design.