Russia wants to be a space exploration superpower again, despite the leadership shown today by the US and China. And their destination is the moon. Specifically, Moscow wants its Luna-25 module to be the first to reach the coveted lunar ice and all go through the first step, which it takes from the Vostochny Cosmodrome. A Soyuz rocket will launch this probe that aims to be the pioneer of humanity in the lunar south pole. Not an easy goal: so far only three countries have managed to land a probe on the moon: the Soviet Union, the USA and China. In April, a Japanese probe crashed while trying to make the first moon landing by a private space company. And the abrupt areas of the cold and dark poles make it even more complicated.
Scheduled for 2:10 a.m. Moscow time (1:10 a.m. Spanish Peninsula time), the launch will be from the so-called Eastern Cosmodrome at Vostochny in the Siberian region, 5,550 kilometers east of Moscow. Russia has not sent a probe to Earth’s natural satellite since 1976, when Luna-24 achieved great success in bringing back a sample of moon rock. Back then, Russia was part of the Soviet Union, and the current leaders of Russian space exploration want to lay claim to that legacy.
The expedition has given some encouragement to the Russian scientific community, which has been hit hard by the Kremlin’s increasing interference in universities and the prosecution of some respected researchers. “The goals of Luna-25 can be divided into technical and scientific,” writes Professor Maxim Litvak of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Kanal Nauka (Science Channel, in Russian). “It has been almost half a century since our last mission and in the 21st century no one has landed on the moon except the Chinese. Several generations of engineers have passed in that time,” says Litvak, adding that “the polar region fascinates everyone in the scientific community.”
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Russian Defense Ministry broadcaster Zvezdá has also focused this mission on its symbolism for the Kremlin and rivalry with the rest of the world for the “conquest” of the lunar pole. “Here’s the intrigue: Luna-25 will land two days ahead of the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3 if all goes according to plan. It took off on July 14 but hasn’t landed yet, leaving the question of who will arrive first. However, NASA boss Bill Nelson downplayed both missions, citing an alleged Chinese threat.
“There are not many people saying that Russia is ready to put astronauts on the moon (…). “I think the real space race is between us and China,” Nelson said Thursday, comparing the arrival of Asian astronauts at the moon’s south pole to Beijing’s bid for the Spratly Islands between Vietnam, China and the Philippines.
Another space race
But today, with its current goal of conquering the South Pole, its rival is not the US or nascent China, but India, which weeks ago launched its Chandrayaan-3 probe and is scheduled to land near the pole on August 23 . A date that limits the range of competition to the maximum. Luna-25 plans to fly to the satellite for five days and then remain in that orbit for between five and seven days to time the delicate landing maneuver. This scenario leaves a window of August 21-24 to reach the moon, according to Roskosmos, the Russian space agency. You can easily win or lose a day.
Despite the close timing match, the Russian space agency is making sure the two missions don’t interfere with each other, as different landing sites are planned. “There is no risk of them interfering with each other or colliding. “There’s enough space on the moon for everyone,” a Roscosmos spokesman told Portal. The main landing site chosen by Russia is near Bogoslavsky Crater, about 120 kilometers from the landing site chosen by India for its lander. Another notable difference is that Chandrayaan-3 plans to conduct experiments for two weeks, while Luna-25 plans to explore the satellite for a year.
Russian Space Agency technicians finalize the details of the Luna 25 module.Roskosmos
The Academy of Sciences has designed the robotic arm of a mission that, unlike the previous Soviet missions, was not intended to return to Earth with lunar samples but to test new technologies on the satellite. The device weighs barely five and a half kilos and is designed to penetrate up to 25 centimeters into the regolith and transfer the sample to the instrument, which analyzes its composition.
For the launch, Moscow has evacuated the 26 residents of a village in Russia’s far east because, according to Roscosmos, there is “a one in a million chance” that one of the stages of the rocket that fires the module could fall on their heads, a quoted by Portal local officials. Shakhtinsky residents will watch the launch from a privileged location and receive a free breakfast during their more than three-hour evacuation.
Litvak emphasizes that successive Luna space programs will culminate in the delivery of multiple samples from the satellite’s polar region to Earth. Roscosmos Director of Advanced Projects Alexander Bloshenko announced this week that the Luna 26 mission, which focuses on the satellite’s orbit, is planned for 2027.
Selected places for landing the probe.Roskosmos
The launch of Luna-25 is a coup by the Kremlin, as sanctions are tightening and the national currency has depreciated enormously in recent months, from just under 60 rubles per euro in the spring to now over 107 rubles. The message is that Russia can cope with these costs despite the war, a fact highlighted by another Academy of Sciences scientist, Space Research Institute expert Natan Eismont, in an interview with News.ru. “It took more than a decade to prepare for launch, and during that time there was famine,” he says.
Luna-25’s target, with its first launch scheduled for 2021, was the ice in the dark craters of the lunar southern tip, a potential source of water for a future human base and even as a resource for future expeditions to Mars. Scientists think it may contain significant amounts of ice water that could be used to obtain fuel and oxygen, as well as for drinking. NASA wants to set up a camp near the pole and thus continue its Artemis program.
The precedent is not positive for Russia. Luna-25 is Russia’s first fully developed space mission since November 2011, when it launched Phobos-Grunt towards Mars but eventually crashed back to Earth. “The Moon is the seventh continent from Earth, so we’re kind of doomed to tame it,” said Lev Zeleny, a space researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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