Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Russia’s Luna-25.
Image credit: Roscosmos

Russia is set to reactivate the country’s robotic investigation of the Moon, picking up from its former Soviet Union days of heady and milestone-making lunar exploration.

Luna-25 is reportedly targeted for an August 11 sendoff to the Moon, departing from the Vostochny cosmodrome atop a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Fregat upper stage.

Image credit: Roscosmos

“This launch is important, both for historical and forward-looking reasons. It means a lot,” said Brian Harvey, a noted author and space historian in Ireland with an eye on past Soviet Union, now Russian, space exploits.

Prep work for sendoff

According to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, Luna-25 is now fueled with propellant and loaded with compressed gases.

Meanwhile, employees of the IKI RAS, the space research institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have arrived at Vostochny to prepare the Luna-25 scientific equipment for launch.

Topographic map of the southern sub-polar region of the Moon showing the location of Boguslawsky crater.
Credit: Ivanov et al., 2015 via Arizona State University/LROC

IKI technicians are overseeing the completion of the installation of the ARIES-L scientific equipment and its verification, measurements of the radiation background on board the spacecraft for the space experiment with the ADRON-LR device, as well as carrying out final pre-launch operations with the spacecraft.

The Luna-25 is slated for touchdown at the Moon’s south pole.

For the whole story on why this Russian reconnection with Moon exploration is crucial, go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story – “Russia’s Return to the Moon With Luna-25: High Risk, High Stakes” at:

https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploration/russias-return-to-the-moon-with-luna-25-high-risk-high-stakes/