Russia will launch its first spacecraft to the moon on Friday since 1976, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced on Monday, which has been struggling for decades to carry out its own projects. The launch of the Luna-25 lander will take place “on August 11 at 02:10:57 Moscow time” (23:10:57 GMT Thursday), Roscosmos said in a statement, as world powers such as the United States and China, multiply the missions for the moon landings.
Roscosmos said a Soyuz launch vehicle has been “assembled” at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Far East for the launch of Luna-25, which will land near the South Pole of the Moon, “in difficult terrain.” The flight is expected to last between “four and a half and five and a half days”, according to data published by Roscosmos and quoted by the official Tass news agency.
Once on the moon, Luna-25, which weighs nearly 800 kilograms, will have the mission for at least one year to “sample and analyze the soil and conduct long-term scientific research”, said the Russian space agency in its official press release.
This launch is the first mission of Russia’s new lunar program and comes at a time when Moscow wishes in particular to strengthen its space cooperation with Beijing, in full tension with the Western space powers because of Ukraine.
After the launch of the Russian military offensive in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, the European Space Agency (ESA) said that it would no longer cooperate with Russia on the launch of Luna-25, nor on future missions 26 and 27. .
Despite this withdrawal, Moscow had declared that it would continue its lunar projects and replace ESA equipment with Russian-made scientific equipment. The USSR’s last lunar mission was that of the Luna-24 space probe, in 1976.
Since the fall of the USSR, Moscow has struggled to innovate in the field of space exploration and its programs now face competition not only from state actors, but also from private initiatives, such as Space X, by billionaire Elon Musk.