Russia launches lunar lander in race to find water at Moon's south pole

 by webdesk

Russia launches lunar lander in race to find water at Moon's south pole

The lander is expected to land on the moon on August 21, 2023

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MOSCOW:

Russia launched its first lunar landing spacecraft in 47 years on Friday in a bid to become the first nation to make a soft landing at the moon's south pole, an area believed to contain coveted pockets of water ice.

Russia's lunar mission, its first since 1976, is competing with India, which launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander last month, and more broadly with the United States and China, both of which have developed advanced lunar exploration programs aimed at the moon's south pole.

A Soyuz 2.1 rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow, at 2:11 a.m. Moscow time (1111 GMT Thursday) on Friday.

The lander was boosted from Earth orbit toward the moon more than an hour later when the craft took over mission control, Russia's Roskosmos space agency said.

The lander is expected to land on the moon on August 21, Russian cosmonautics chief Yuri Borisov told state television, although the space agency previously set August 23 as the landing date.

"Now we will wait for the 21st. I hope that there will be a very precise soft landing on the moon," Borisov told Vostochny Cosmodrome workers after the launch. “We hope to be the first.

Luna-25, about the size of a small car, will aim to operate for a year at the moon's south pole, where scientists from NASA and other space agencies have discovered traces of water ice in shadowed craters in the region in recent years.

Much is riding on the Luna-25 mission as the Kremlin says Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, many of which have targeted Moscow's aerospace sector, have failed to cripple Russia's economy.

The lunar shot, which Russia has been planning for decades, will also test the country's growing independence in space after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 severed nearly all of Moscow's space ties with the West, except for its integral role on the International Space Station.

The European Space Agency had planned to test its Pilot-D navigation camera by docking with Luna-25, but cut ties to the project after Russia invaded Ukraine.

"Russian aspirations for the moon are a mix of a lot of different things. I think first and foremost it's an expression of national power on the global stage," Asif Siddiqi, a history professor at Fordham University, told Reuters.

American astronaut Neil Armstrong became famous in 1969 for being the first man to walk on the moon, but the Soviet Union's Luna-2 mission was the first spacecraft to reach the moon's surface in 1959, and Luna-9 in 1966 was the first. to have a soft landing.

Moscow then focused on Mars exploration, and since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has not sent scientific probes beyond Earth orbit.

For centuries, astronomers have wondered about water on the moon, which is 100 times drier than the Sahara. NASA maps in 2018 showed water ice in shadowed parts of the Moon, and in 2020 NASA confirmed that water also exists in sunlit regions.

Major powers such as the United States, China, India, Japan and the European Union have all explored the moon in recent years. Last year, the Japanese moon landing failed, and in 2019, the Israeli mission failed.

No country has made a soft landing at the South Pole. India's Chandrayaan-2 mission failed in 2019.

The rough terrain makes it difficult to land, but the prize for the discovery of water ice could be historic: a large one could be used to extract fuel and oxygen, as well as drinking water.

Borisov said that at least three more lunar missions are planned over the next seven years, and that after that Russia and China will work on a possible manned lunar mission.

"I and my colleagues from China will move on to the next phase - the possibility of a manned mission to the moon and the construction of a lunar base," he said.

Maxim Litvak, head of the planning group for the Luna-25 science facility, said the most important task is to land where no one else has - and find water.

"There are signs of ice in the soil of the Luna-25 landing pad," he said, adding that Luna-25 will operate on the moon for at least one Earth year and collect samples.

Roskosmos said the trip to the moon would take five days. The craft will spend 5-7 days in lunar orbit before descending to one of three possible landing sites near the pole — a timeline that suggests it could match or narrowly beat its Indian rival on the lunar surface.

Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to undergo experiments for two weeks.

Weighing 1.8 tons and carrying 31 kg (68 lb) of scientific equipment, Luna-25 will use a scoop to take rock samples from up to 15 cm (6 in) deep to test for the presence of frozen water.