Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: NPO Lavochkin/Roscosmos

Russia has reignited its Moon exploration program with the launch today of Luna-25 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far Eastern Amur Region.

Roscosmos has announced that the automatic station was put on the flight path to the Moon and separated from the upper stage Fregat.

Luna-25 is now scheduled to nudge itself into lunar orbit on August 16, a Roscosmos posting adds, and the craft’s soft landing on the Moon is scheduled for August 21.

Image credit: RT/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Modern Russia

The rumbling sendoff of Luna-25 atop a Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with a Fregat upper stage signals Russia’s re-rendezvous with lunar exploration. Its departure picks up where the former Soviet Union milestone-making Moon probing projects left off. In 1976, Luna-24 successfully delivered about 170 grams of lunar topside samples to Earth.

Image credit: Roscosmos

But that was then. Luna-25 is spotlighted as the first domestically produced Moon probe in modern Russia history.

Following its voyage to the Moon and multiple days in lunar orbit, the spacecraft is slated to set down at the Moon’s south pole, near the Boguslawsky crater.

For more information on the Luna-25 mission now headed for the Moon, go to my new Space.com story – “Russia launches Luna-25 moon lander, its 1st lunar probe in 47 years” – at: https://www.space.com/russia-luna-25-moon-mission-launch-success