Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos announced in early August that flight units of scientific instruments for its Luna-25 Moon lander had been delivered from the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences to the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association (part of Roscosmos). Scheduled to launch in October 2021, the Luna-25 space project “opens a long-term Russian lunar program, which includes missions to study the Moon from orbit and surface, the collection and return of lunar soil to Earth, as well as, in the future, the construction of a visited lunar base and full-scale development of our satellite,” according to Roscosmos.
The Luna-25 mission and a subsequent Moon lander are a partnership between Russia and the European Space Agency. Experts say the ambitious Russian program to return to the Moon is on track so far, but it faces risks, both technical and managerial.
“We’ve all been waiting a long time” for Russia’s reactivation of its Moon exploration program, says David Parker, director of human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency, reported Scientific American on Aug. 27. Luna-25’s eight Russian science instruments are starting to come together under the auspices of IKI, he says. The lander, headed for the Moon’s South Pole, is part of a new multinational quest to explore the lunar polar regions and appraise the nature of ice deposits there and their potential as resources for future missions.
The ESA has taken responsibility to deliver a small Pilot-D demonstration camera for Luna-25. A similar camera will be a key piece of a precision-landing-and-hazard-avoidance system that the European agency is producing for Russia’s Luna-27, due to launch in 2024. Luna-27 will also carry the ESA’s Prospect drill and a miniature laboratory that, together with another Russian instrument, will search for water ice and other chemicals under the Moon’s surface.
