The legendary Moon missions with which the USSR robotically explored our satellite return in the 21st century, precisely at a time when the US competes with China to send their respective astronauts to our satellite earlier. Russia has no plans and surely no means to send its cosmonauts to the lunar surface, but this Friday it is preparing to send its first robot to the Moon since 1976, Luna-25 (also known as Luna-Glob).
As detailed by the Russian agency, Roscosmos, after several postponements and delays (the initial plan was for the launch to be in 2019), takeoff is scheduled for Friday, August 11 at 02:10:57 Moscow time (a hour less in Spain). A Soyuz rocket will be in charge of putting the lunar ship into orbit from the Vostochny cosmodrome (about 5,500 kilometers from Moscow), bound for the long-awaited south pole of the Moon, where it is believed that there are water reserves.
Due to this space launch, on Friday morning the Russian authorities will preventively evacuate for a few hours the village of Shakhtinskyi, in the Khabarovsk region, southeast of the launch site, as the town is in the planned area where rocket boosters will drop after they separate, Reuters reports.
The South Pole is also the place chosen by China for its future missions and by the US to send the Artemis 3 astronauts, who will set foot on our satellite in December 2025 at the earliest.. India is also going to land its Chandrayaan-3 robotic probe, launched on July 14, on the South Pole.. According to the authorities of that country, the descent of its probe will be on August 23, a few days after Luna-25. If they pull off a successful moon landing, the Russians would be the first to reach this coveted region.
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The Luna-25 spacecraft, weighing about 800 kilos and powered by solar cells and batteries, will take between four and a half and five and a half days to reach our satellite, where it will land, “in a complicated area”, according to Roscosmos.. His work will consist of taking samples and analyzing the lunar regolith and conducting scientific research with his eight instruments in the so-called Boguslawsky crater.. The ship will test new technologies, investigate volatile organic compounds and the presence of water in this area. If all goes well, it is expected to be operational for a year.
If all goes well, the Luna-25 landing will take place a few days before another ship, the Indian Chandrayaan-3, launched on July 14, reaches our satellite.. According to the Indian authorities, the descent of its probe will be on August 23.
The Soyuz-2.1b rocket with the Luna-25 EFE
Between January 1959 and August 1976, the Soviet Union sent a flotilla of 24 space probes and satellites designed by the scientist Sergei Korolev to the Moon with the aim of photographing and studying the surface of our satellite.. Three of them brought samples of lunar rocks to Earth. Luna-24 closed this program that Russia is now taking up.
Although kept secret, the Soviets also launched a manned program to go to the Moon and compete with NASA's Apollo missions during the Cold War, with the N1 rocket, which failed to carry it out despite the fact that it is estimated that it invested 6,000 million euros. In 1976 this project was concluded.
The new Luna robotics program was approved in 2014, and in addition to Luna-25, Luna-26 and Luna-27 are scheduled to be launched in the coming years.
Russia's future lunar plans directly involve China, with which it has strengthened its collaboration in recent years, as shown by its intention to build a lunar base together in the coming years.
This cooperation with the Asian giant has been further intensified since 2022. The War in Ukraine has broken Russia's space cooperation with Western countries in most missions, except in the International Space Station (ISS), where despite threats from the former director of Roscosmos, it maintains its participation. The conflict in Ukraine led the European Space Agency (ESA) to postpone last year the ExoMars mission that it was preparing together with Russia, and which was going to put a sophisticated robotic vehicle on Mars to search for signs of life on the red planet.
Since the outbreak of the war, European missions are no longer launched with Russian Soyuz rockets, which has forced ESA to look for alternatives for the many satellites and spacecraft that were going to launch with them and has aggravated the crisis due to the shortage of rockets that the European space sector suffers.