[4] The ascent stage was a smaller cylinder with a spherical top which replaced the Lunokhod rover and housing from the Ye-8 bus.

It carried a cylindrical hermetically sealed soil sample container inside a spherical re-entry capsule, mounted on a 1920 kg thrust KRD-61 rocket.

[10] Under command from ground control, the lander deployed its sample arm and pushed its drilling head about two metres into the nearby soil.

The sample was safely stowed in the small return capsule, and after nearly a day on the Moon, Luna 24 lifted off successfully at 05:25 UTC on 19 August 1976.

After an uneventful return trip, Luna 24's capsule entered Earth's atmosphere and parachuted safely to land at 05:55 UTC on 22 August 1976, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast of Surgut in western Siberia.

In February 1978, Soviet scientists M. Akhmanova, B. Dement'ev, and M. Markov of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytic Chemistry published a paper claiming a detection of water fairly definitively.

[11][12] Their study showed that the samples returned to Earth by the probe contained about 0.1% water by mass, as seen in infrared absorption spectroscopy (at about 3 μm wavelength), at a detection level about 10 times above the threshold,[13] although Crotts points out that "The authors... were not willing to stake their reputations on an absolute statement that terrestrial contamination was completely avoided.