A rocket carrying a lunar lander lifted off on Friday for Russia’s first lunar mission in nearly 50 years.
The launch of the Luna-25 spacecraft to the Moon from Russia’s Vostochny spaceport is Russia’s first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union.
The Russian lunar spacecraft is expected to reach the Moon on August 23, roughly the same day an Indian spacecraft launched on July 14. The Russian spacecraft will take around 5.5 days to get close to the Moon, then spend three to seven days in orbit at around 100 kilometers before heading to the surface.
Only three countries have successfully landed on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. India and Russia are aiming to be the first to land on the moon’s south pole.
Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, said it wanted to demonstrate that Russia “is a state capable of sending a payload to the Moon” and “ensure Russia’s guaranteed access to the Moon’s surface.”
“Studying the moon is not the goal,” said Vitaly Egorov, a popular Russian space analyst. “The goal is political competition between two superpowers, China and the United States, and a number of other countries that also want to claim the title of space superpower,” he added.
Sanctions imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine make it difficult for the country to access Western technology, affecting its space program. Luna-25 was initially envisioned to carry a small lunar rover, but that idea was dropped to reduce the spacecraft’s weight and increase its reliability, according to the analyst.
“Foreign electronics are lighter, domestic electronics are heavier,” Egorov said. “While scientists may be tasked with studying lunar water, for Roscosmos the main task is simply to land on the Moon: to recapture lost Soviet expertise and learn to perform this task in a new era,” he explained.
The spaceport is a pet project of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is central to his efforts to turn Russia into a space superpower and remove Russian launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
An earlier attempt by India to land on the moon’s south pole in 2019 ended when the lander crashed into the moon’s surface.
The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe that polar craters may contain water. Future explorers could turn frozen water in rocks into air and rocket fuel.
Source: TSF
