Goals: Like Luna 4 through 7, this was a Soviet attempt at a soft landing on the Moon.
Accomplishments: The mission did complete the experimental development of the star-orientation system and ground control of radio equipment, flight trajectory and other instrumentation. But escaping air from a punctured airbag caused the spacecraft to spin, preventing a proper firing of the retrorockets to slow the spacecraft's descent. It crashed into the lunar surface.
This was the Soviet Union's fifth attempt to make a survivable landing on the Moon.