2023-08-11 09:49:59
Russia resumed this Friday, almost 50 years after its last trip, the conquest of the Moon in search of water and other natural resources with the launch of the probe Luna-25which will reach the orbit of the Earth’s satellite in a few days.
The automatic station took off at 01:10 a.m. (Spanish peninsular time) from the Vostochni cosmodrome, located in the Russian Far East, heading for the unexplored lunar South Pole.
The goal of the Russian probe Luna-25 is to land on the lunar south pole on August 21, before the Indian Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft does on the 23rd.
The Russian Luna-25 mission is the successor to the Soviet Luna-24, which operated the third spacecraft to sample the lunar surface in August 1976.
The new mission has suffered continuous delays since 2019, to which the decision of the European Space Agency to suspend its cooperation with the Russian program last year due to the war in Ukraine also contributed.
Who will reach the lunar south pole first?
Russia wants to be the first space power to land on the South Pole, something the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft launched by India will do on August 23. this little space race between the two powers will be settled this August.
“We hope to be the first,” he said today Yuri Borísovhead of the Russian space agency, Roscomos.
It is expected that the probe – which has a mass of 1,800 kilosof which 31 are scientific teams – will reach lunar orbit within four to five days.
Next, it will have to maneuver for almost a week around the celestial body, some 100 kilometers high, in search of the ideal elliptical orbit to land the August 21Borisov advanced.
Luna-25 will test moon landing technologies, collect samples, and study the lunar surface
As explained by the Russian agency Roscosmos, Luna-25 will land north of the Boguslawski crater in an area with a rugged relief and adverse conditions.
A Soviet spacecraft, Luna-2, was already the first to land on our satellite in 1959, a feat that the US emulated years later with its Ranger program.
Bring more lunar samples to Earth
The objective of the mission, which will last for about twelve months, is to develop the moon landing technologyto take samples from the surface – about 170 grams of lunar soil that it will bring to Earth – and study the exosphere and the upper layer of the regulet (surface material), including relief, its solidity and composition, as well as lunar dust.
Russia wants to be the first country to find water on the Moon, a discovery that could allow human life there in the future
Russia also wants to be the first country to find agua on the Moon, a discovery that could allow human life on this satellite in the future.
According to previous observations, at the south pole there may be water in the form of ice hidden in craters. Precisely, Russia plans to launch the probe in 2028 Luna-27which will be equipped with a perforator.
The water “is almost on the surface, under a small layer of land. There may be other resources, but for that you have to drill into the Moon. And so far no one has decided to start that hard work,” he said. Vladimir Surdinan astronomer from Moscow State University, to the official RIA Novosti news agency.
The water is almost on the surface, under a small layer of land. There may be other resources, but for that you would have to drill and, for now, no one has decided on that hard work
Vladimir Surdin (Moscow State University)
The ship has a LAZMA mass spectrometer to study the chemical composition of the lunar surface, a particle detector neutral and charged ARIES, a moon dust detector PML and a infrared spectrometer LIS, among other instruments.
New space race to the moon
In the absence of India getting it, United States, Russia and China They are, in this order, the only three countries that have reached the Moon, where Moscow wants to send a manned spacecraft at the beginning of the next decade.
The Russian President, Vladimir PutinIn need of good news, he announced on April 12, on the occasion of the 62nd anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, his decision to soon resume the lunar program in order to “explore other planets of the solar system” and “conquer new frontiers”. .
Chinawhich in 2019 became the first country to land on the moon with a probe on the far side of the Moonrecently announced the construction for the next decade of a scientific exploration base at the South Pole.
“As China has demonstrated its space ambitions, other countries have decided not to be left behind. And now it can be said that the second space race has started,” Surdin said.
Moscow and Beijing cooperate on a manned program and the 2035 launch of the International Lunar Research Station
In addition, as Borisov explained today, Moscow and Beijing are cooperating on a manned program and the 2035 launch of the International Lunar Research Station.
Meanwhile, the manager of the NASA, Bill Nelson, this week expressed his enthusiasm for the launch in 2024 of the Artemis IIthe first manned mission to the satellite since 1972 with Apollo 17.
He announced that, if this mission is successfully completed, for the time being in orbit around our satellite, Artemis III will land on the South Pole in 2025.
#Russian #probe #conquer #South #Pole #Moon #takes