In 1976, while the Soviet Union was still in existence, Russia sent its last lunar mission, Luna-24, into space.
Russia’s Luna 25 lander mission is scheduled to arrive on the Moon on August 11th, 2017, 47 years after the country last visited the Moon.
According to the TASS news agency, the Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying the Luna-25 spacecraft lifted off from Russia’s Vostochny launch pad at 2:10 a.m. Moscow time (4:40 a.m. IST) on Friday.
In 1976, while the Soviet Union was still in existence, Russia sent its last lunar mission, Luna-24, into space.
About 170 grammes of lunar material were successfully returned to Earth.
The Luna-25 spacecraft will launch on August 16 and enter Moon’s orbit on August 21.
Before landing near the Boguslawsky crater, the spacecraft will spend three to seven days orbiting the moon at a height of roughly 100 km.
Craters Manzinus and Pentland-A have been proposed as backup landing locations.
After a successful landing, Luna-25 plans to stay on the moon for at least one Earth year.
The primary focus is on perfecting the soft landing system. The mission’s success would make it the first time a spacecraft landed near the Moon’s South Pole.
Russian Space Research Institute (IKI) head scientist Maxim Litvak remarked in a blog post that Luna-25’s “most important task, to put it simply, is to sit where no one has sat.”
Now, “everyone” wants to explore the polar areas because “this area is intriguing to everyone in the scientific community,” as Litvak put it.
Orbital data shows that the soil around the Luna-25 landing site has ice deposits. This is not the situation in the equatorial areas where we arrived earlier.
Interestingly, the landing timing and location for Luna-25 are planned to coincide with those of India’s Chandrayaan 3 mission, which was launched on July 14 and entered lunar orbit on August 6.
The Artemis mission of the US space agency NASA aims to create a base or bases near the south pole of the Moon by the end of the 2020s.
The spacecraft’s purpose is to explore the moon’s surface for traces of water and other natural resources and to investigate the impact of cosmic rays and other electromagnetic emissions on the lunar environment.
Multiple cameras are installed on the lander. Time-lapse film of the landing and a wide-angle high dynamic range photograph of the lunar landscape will be created.
According to TASS, Luna-25’s cameras will rotate at predetermined intervals and in response to a signal sent from Earth.
The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has also recently revealed plans for future Moon expeditions.
“Luna-26 is planned for 2027, Luna-27 – for 2028, and Luna-28 – in 2030 or later,” Yury Borisov was reported as adding.
After that, the Russian space agency will begin the next stage of the project.
After that, “our Chinese partners and I will launch a manned mission and build a lunar base,” Borisov added. We anticipate that many nations will join this initiative because of its potential significance and longevity.
