Russia Plans to Resume Lunar Exploration After Nearly Half a Century

After an absence of almost half a century, Russia plans to make a comeback to the moon by launching an unmanned lander towards the southern pole. This move puts them in competition with NASA and various other space agencies in the race to explore the lunar surface.

The launch is scheduled from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East at around 2 a.m. Moscow time, or 7 p.m. In New York on Thursday, Luna-25 will compete with India’s Chandrayaan-3, which is orbiting the moon and likely also trying to touch the pole in late August. Whichever country lands first can claim the title of first to land a spacecraft intact in or near that area.

The South Pole of the Moon is a highly sought-after destination by spacefaring nations, including the United States and China. Probes on various lunar spacecraft have found evidence of water ice in craters in this region. Engineers and scientists have suggested the possibility of finding and perhaps even mining this water ice in the future for use in future lunar exploration and perhaps even as a source of rocket fuel.

Getting Luna-25 safely to the moon would give a much-needed boost to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, which has struggled in recent years with low funding, controversial leadership and poor execution, but hasn’t seen much progress beyond sending humans and satellites to the low Earth. in orbit.

The Soviet Union was the first country to land a spacecraft on the moon, but Russia abandoned lunar exploration after the last Soviet lunar mission, a robotic probe, in 1976.

Luna-25’s success is far from guaranteed, especially since numerous lunar exploration missions have struggled to reach the lunar surface intact in recent years. In April, a lander used by the Japanese company ispace crashed into the moon during a landing attempt and arrived too quickly for touchdown. In 2019, India’s Vikram lunar counter, part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, and the experimental counter by Israeli non-profit SpaceIL share a similar fate.

After reaching the moon, Luna-25 will study the lunar soil and exosphere, which are part of the moon’s very thin atmosphere. The spacecraft is also equipped with a small robotic arm to collect soil samples for analysis. The calculator’s task is designed to last up to a year.

Roscosmos has suffered further damage following President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. The country’s space partnerships are all but evaporating, with satellite operators such as OneWeb Ltd. canceling launches.

The European Space Agency abandoned plans to provide a navigation camera to ride on Luna-25 and suspended a joint project for a Mars explorer, although Russia continues to work with its US, European, Japanese and Canadian partners on the International Space Station.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and others are building vast networks of satellites in low Earth orbit, but Russia’s share of the launch market has shrunk, accounting for only about 8% of launches this year, according to PwC data, down from nearly 40%. a decade ago.

The war “accelerated a decline that was already there,” said Dallas Kasaboski, principal analyst at space consulting firm Northern Sky Research. The Russians “just haven’t been as strong a leader in space as they historically have been.”

NASA, which hopes to return astronauts to the moon through its Artemis program, announced 13 potential landing sites near the pole last year.

The Chinese space agency’s Chang’e 7 robot, which is planned for around 2026, will carry equipment to explore ice reserves from a permanently shadowed part of the area’s crater, state media reported on August 1.

Later, China will use spacecraft to build a research station near the South Pole, and the government plans to send the first Chinese astronauts to the moon by 2030, an official with China’s manned space agency said in May.

China’s warning

While NASA Director Bill Nelson has repeatedly criticized China and warned that Beijing may try to reach the moon’s south pole first and prevent other countries from accessing the resources there, he has not issued similar warnings about Russia. During the Soviet Union, no Russian cosmonaut reached the moon.

The Russian space program is not going to send anyone there, Nelson said at a press conference on August 8.

“I don’t think many people would say at this point that Russia is actually ready to land astronauts on the moon in the timeframe we’re talking about, or that China is ready,” Nelson said. “So I think the space race is really between us and China.”

Roscosmos did not respond to requests for comment.

After such a long absence from the Moon, Roscosmos plans to send more missions after Luna-25. There are plans to descend to look for minerals and water ice.