The Soviet Union launches Zond 8, the final Zond flight and the final flight of the Soyuz 7K-L1 capsule which was intended to be the command & service module of the Soviet manned lunar effort. Again, the vehicle orbits the moon and returns to Earth unmanned after a week in space. For only the second time, the 7K-L1 vehicle performs every phase of the flight flawlessly – though the Soviet Union, trying to downplay the space race, now retroactively denies that it was ever interested in sending men to the moon.
ITV airs the 13th episode of Ace Of Wands, starring Michael McKenzie, Tony Selby and Judy Loe, closing the series’ first season. This episode, like the rest of the series’ first two seasons, is now missing from the archives.
The sixth episode of Gerry Anderson’s live-action UFO series airs on ITV, starring Edward Bishop and Michael Billington. George Sewell guest stars.
ABC airs the fifth episode of the modern-day science fiction series The Immortal, starring Christopher George. Vic Morrow guest stars.
The Soviet Union launches unmanned space probe Luna 17 toward the moon, carrying with it the first automated moon rover, Lunokhod 1. Solar-powered and deployed to the surface via a pair of ramps, the wheeled rover operates for eleven months, more than double the expected operational life span. Unlike Luna 16, Luna 17 and Lunokhod perform their studies of the lunar surface without returning any soil samples to Earth.
Fly Records releases the third album by Birmingham rock group 
NASA and the newly-rechristened National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (formerly ESSA) launch NOAA-1, a weather satellite intended to operate in a near-polar low Earth orbit. Equipped with four cameras, NOAA-1 will operate in orbit for nearly a year before it begins suffering equipment malfunctions. Overheating in the spacecraft’s attitude control system forces ground controllers to turn off some of its weather sensing equipment, and NOAA-1 will eventually be shut down in 
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