Luna 25 was successfully placed in lunar orbit on Wednesday August 16, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos. This is the first Russian lunar probe launched in almost 50 years.
“For the first time in modern Russian history, an automatic station was placed in lunar orbit at 12:3 p.m. Moscow time,” the Roscosmos press service told AFP.
The launch of the Luna 25 probe is the first lunar mission for Moscow since 1976, when the USSR was a pioneer in the conquest of space. “All Luna 25 systems are working normally, communication with it is stable,” according to the same source.
The orbiting was carried out using the probe’s motor which was plugged in twice starting at 11:57 a.m. Moscow time, the first time for 243 seconds, the second time for 76 seconds, Roscosmos explained. in a press release.
The probe will orbit the Moon, 100 kilometers from its surface, before its scheduled landing on Monday, August 21, north of the Bogouslavsky crater, on the lunar South Pole, according to the agency.
Sunday, the cameras installed on the probe made the first photos from space, where we can see elements of the probe with, in the distance, the Earth and the Moon, announced Roscosmos.
The probe of nearly 800 kilos carried by a Soyuz rocket took off on the night of August 10 to 11 from the Vostotchny cosmodrome in the Far East. The probe, which will have to stay on the Moon for a year, will have the task of taking samples and analyzing the soil of the Moon.
“For the first time in history, the moon landing will be performed on the lunar south pole. Until now, everyone landed in the equatorial zone,” said senior Roscosmos official Alexander Blokhin in a recent interview with the official Rossiïskaïa Gazeta newspaper.
The mission is intended to give new impetus to the Russian space sector, which has been struggling for years due to funding problems and corruption scandals, and now isolated due to the conflict in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin has promised to continue Russia’s space program despite sanctions, citing the example of the USSR sending the first man into space in 1961, amid escalating East-West tensions.
