Russia will launch its first lunar spacecraft since 1976 on Friday

August 7, 2023

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, at a time when other world powers , like the United States and China, are increasing the missions for the moon landings.

Roscosmos explained that a Soyuz launcher had been “assembled” at the Vostotchny cosmodrome in the Russian Far East for the launch of Luna-25, which will have to 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.

The authorities of the Khabarovsk region, in the far east, have already announced the evacuation of a village from Friday morning, this locality being in the possible fallout zone of the first stage of the launcher.

Once on the Moon, Luna-25, which weighs nearly 800 kilograms, will have the mission, for at least one year, of “taking (samples) and analyzing the soil and carrying out long-term scientific research”, a underlined the Russian space agency in its official press release.

The launch is the first mission of Russia’s new lunar program and comes as that country seeks to develop its own projects and strengthen its space collaboration with Beijing, its cooperation with Western space powers having been ravaged since the military Russian began its assault on Ukraine.

“(It) is of great importance, not even for Putin’s Russia, but for that of post-Putin, a peaceful Russia”, analysis with AFP Vitali Egorov, a Russian specialist in space .

“This launch will show that the Russians are capable of engaging in the peaceful exploration of space,” he wants to believe.

After the launch of the military offensive by Vladimir Putin, the European Space Agency (ESA) gave up working with Moscow on the launch of Luna-25 and on future missions 26 and 27.

Russia had said it would continue its lunar projects and replace ESA equipment with domestically made science equipment.

However, it has struggled to innovate for decades, its space sector having been plagued by a lack of resources and corruption.

It has therefore relied for years on the reliability of its launchers, but Roscosmos is facing ever-increasing competition and its position has deteriorated with Western sanctions.

Russia still claims to be a great space power in view of its Soviet past.

During a trip to the Vostotchny cosmodrome in April 2022, Vladimir Putin recalled that the USSR had succeeded in 1961 in sending the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, despite “total” sanctions taken against it. .

He had thus assured that Russia would continue to implement its lunar program despite Western reprisals because of the conflict in Ukraine.

“We are guided by the desire of our ancestors to move forward, despite all the difficulties and all the attempts to prevent us (from it), had dropped the Russian president during an exchange with employees of the cosmodrome. .

Last June, the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borissov, however, described the Russian lunar mission as “risky”.

“Around the world, the probability of success of such missions is estimated at around 70%,” he noted.

The USSR’s last lunar mission was that of the Luna-24 space probe in 1976, more than 25 years after the first such program.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has struggled to get back into space exploration and its programs now face competition not only from state actors but also from private initiatives, such as those of Space X, billionaire Elon Musk .