The first lunar mission from Russia since 1976 is competing with China and the United States, both of which have sophisticated lunar exploration programmes, as well as with India, which launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander last month.
Russia launches lunar lander: On Friday at 02:11 Moscow time, a Soyuz 2.1v rocket carrying the Luna-25 spacecraft launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome, located 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow.
Yuri Borisov, Russia’s space chief, stated in an interview with Interfax on Friday that they anticipate the lander to reach the moon on August 21. Earlier estimates from the Russian space agency Roscosmos placed the landing on August 23.
“We shall now watch for January 21. After the launch, Borisov reportedly said to staff at the Vostochny cosmodrome, “I hope that a highly precise soft landing on the moon will occur.
The Luna-25 spacecraft, which is about the size of a small car, will attempt to spend a year operating on the moon’s south pole, where researchers from NASA and other space agencies have recently found signs of water ice in the area’s shadowed craters.
There is a lot riding on the Luna-25 mission because, according to the Kremlin, the Western sanctions enacted in response to the Ukraine crisis, many of which targeted Moscow’s aerospace industry, have not succeeded in rendering the Russian economy unviable.
Before its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow had almost no space ties with the West, except for its participation on the International Space Station, where NASA viewed its cooperation with the Russian space agency as crucial for the station’s survival. The moonshot will also test Russia’s growing independence in space.
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“Russia’s goals of reaching the moon are entangled in a variety of diverse activities. Asif Siddiqi, a history professor at Fordham University, told Reuters that he believes that it is, first and foremost, a statement of national power on the international stage.
Although Soviet Union’s Luna-2 mission was the first spacecraft to reach the moon’s surface in 1959 and the Luna-9 mission in 1966 was the first to accomplish a soft landing there, US astronaut Neil Armstrong won fame in 1969 for becoming the first human to walk on the moon.
After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Moscow concentrated on researching Mars, and since then, Russia has not launched any missions outside of Earth orbit.
The Luna-25 spacecraft was schedule to depart Earth’s orbit at 3:30 a.m. Moscow time on Friday.