From the Archives (June 3, 1969): Soviet plans to land man on moon

A Soviet cosmonaut has said the Soviet Union plans to land a man or men on the moon by the end of this year or early next year, if all goes well, according to reports from Japanese correspondents in Moscow. A group of nine Japanese science reporters now visiting Moscow reported to-day [June 2] that the remark was made by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man in the world to walk in space in 1965, in an interview with them on Sunday night [June 1]. Cosmonaut Leonov indicated that, unlike the U.S. Apollo project which sends spaceships directly from the earth to the moon, the Soviet moon project would launch a lunar probe from a space station assembled while in orbit around the earth.