After 47 years Russia returns to touch the moon closely. The Luna-25 robotic mission has taken off, leading a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket from the Vostochny cosmodrome, almost at the eastern end of the country.
According to reports from Roscosmos on its Telegram channel, the Russian Space Agency, the carrier has done its job and the probe is on the flight path towards our natural satellite. The cruise will last less than two weeksto land near the South Pole, and try to stay in the “space that counts”, in order not to lose ground in the new moon race, which has already started, conducted with China (but a step backwards) and in competition with a ” Eastern Bloc” led by the United States.
The story of Luna-25 (otherwise known as Luna-glob) is over ten years old. Conceived in the 90s, immediately after the dissolution of the USSR, it has been continuously postponed until this decade. It was initially part of the collaboration with the European Space Agency. ESA would have provided a navigation camera, which has now been removed and replaced. A partnership interrupted, as well as the other interplanetary missions planned together (first of all Exomars), after the invasion of Ukraine.
Space diviners
Luna 25 departed just a few days later the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3, both bound for the lunar south pole. And both aim to descend and land on August 23, this gives an idea of the traffic that will begin to crowd the route to our natural satellite. The choice follows that of the new American and Chinese lunar programs for explore and establish a settlement where there seem to be two unique conditions: perpetual sunlight and water ice in abundance, virtually unique conditions: Both signify energy and subsistence. And this is exactly what Luna-25 will also be looking for in the “most precious plot of the solar system”.
Spazio Artemis, here is the crew that will fly to the Moon by Matteo Marini 03 April 2023
It is light, weighing less than two tons, but he won’t be able to move, of course, being a lander without a rover to wander among craters and rocks. It has various instruments on board to study the environment in which it will operate. Specifically, an arm with a drill on the end for digging up to 30 centimeters deep and taking samples of regolith, (dust on the surface) to be analyzed in situ by the mass spectrometer, spectrometers for the search for ice and the estimation of its distribution.
Know how to land
Luna-25’s solar panels are the telltale where it’s going to go. The chosen destination is the area around the Boguslavsky crater, at the South Pole. There, the sun’s rays arrive horizontally. During the descent she will do everything by herself, using the cameras to choose the most suitable place. In fact, too large boulders could cause it to overturn.
Space Artemis, return to the Moon. That’s why NASA chose the South Pole by Matteo Marini August 26, 2022
Getting there is just half of the business. Luna-25 will have to demonstrate the ability to make a “soft” moon landing, landing on the ground without damage. It is crucial because the last probe from Moscow that ventured in those parts was a Soviet one, Luna 24, launched in 1976 (a few days earlier Panatta raised the Davis Cup in Chile, amidst the controversy over the Pinochet dictatorship and Leonid Brezhnev was secretary of the Communist Party).
A lot of time has passed, materials and systems have changed. Only China, with as many as three missions, has been successful in recent decades. India, Israel and Japan have already seen, one after another, their probes crash irretrievably. I sign that the Moon is a tough nut to crackabove all because, without an atmosphere and therefore with the impossibility of using parachutes, one must rely solely on retrorockets to slow down and drive to the ground.
Started the new race to the Moon
And it is crucial because, before bringing astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts, it will be necessary to prove that we can get there with robots. For this I am already preparing the Luna-26 orbiter, a satellite to be placed in lunar orbit and Luna-27, a more complex and heavy lander to be landed on the far side. There where a Chinese rover has been roaming for years, while China itself and the US plan to land by 2030 or even earlier. Since the Moon came back first goal of human space explorationand the exploitation of extra atmospheric resources, waiting to make the big leap to Mars, Russia has also reactivated the program. Starting from the Soviet one.
Partners and competitors are light years ahead of a Country affected by sanctions because of the war he chose to bring to Ukraine. According to some analysts, the Moon serves for morale and propaganda, more or less as it happened half a century ago, when the USSR won all the sprints (first satellite, first man and first woman in space, first probe to land, Luna-9 , first probe on another planet, the Venera) but lost the marathon. Despite the advantage, no cosmonaut has ever gone beyond Earth’s orbit.