Luna 25 (Luna-Glob lander) is a planned lunar lander mission by

Roscosmos The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

. It will land near the lunar south pole at the Boguslavsky crater. It was renamed from Luna-Glob lander to Luna 25 to emphasize the continuity of the Soviet

Luna programme The Luna programme (from the Russian word "Luna" meaning "Moon"), occasionally called ''Lunik'' by western media, was a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1976. Fifteen were successful, ...

from the 1970s, though it is still part of what was at one point conceptualized as the

Luna-Glob Luna-Glob (russian: Луна-Глоб, meaning ''Lunar sphere'') is a Moon exploration programme by Roscosmos meant to progress toward the creation of a fully robotic lunar base. When completed, the programme will continue with crewed lunar miss ...

lunar exploration program. As of December 2022, the launch is scheduled for July 2023.

History

Nascent plans for what is now Luna 25 began in the late 1990s, with the evaluation of two spacecraft designs having taken place by 1998. Attempts to revive and complete the project continued throughout the 2000s and were punctuated by an aborted attempt at international cooperation via a merger with

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orb ...

's now-cancelled

Lunar-A LUNAR-A is a cancelled Japanese spacecraft project that was originally scheduled to be launched in August 2004. After many delays (primarily due to potential thruster faults), the project was eventually cancelled in January 2007. It was planned t ...

orbiter, and pressure from another attempted cooperative lunar mission with

Indian Space Research Organisation The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman ...

(ISRO) (which continued without Russia's involvement). Delays in the 2010s came first from the significant rework and delay brought on by the failure of

Phobos-Grunt Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt (russian: link=no, Фобос-Грунт, where ''грунт'' refers to the ''ground'' in the narrow geological meaning of any type of soil or rock exposed on the surface) was an attempted Russian sample return miss ...

in 2011. This is the point at which the modern Luna 25 design was developed. Later, work on the lander was slowed by resource pressures being placed upon spacecraft developer

NPO Lavochkin NPO Lavochkin (russian: НПО Лавочкина, OKB-301, also called Lavochkin Research and Production Association or shortly Lavochkin Association, LA) is a Russian aerospace company. It is a major player in the Russian space program, being th ...

, such as the

weather satellite A weather satellite or meteorological satellite is a type of Earth observation satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be polar orbiting (covering the entire Earth asynchronously), or ge ...

Elektro-L No.2 and the

Spektr-RG Spektr-RG ( Russian: Спектр-РГ, ''Spectrum'' + '' Röntgen'' + ''Gamma''; also called Spectrum-X-Gamma, SRG, SXG) is a Russian–German high-energy astrophysics space observatory which was launched on 13 July 2019. It follows on from th ...

observatory as well the landing platform Russia was contributing to

ExoMars 2020 ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) is an astrobiology programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The goals of ExoMars are to search for signs of past life on Mars, investigate how the Martian water and geochemical environment varies, investigate ...

. By 2017, the propulsion system for the spacecraft was in assembly.

Mission

Initial mission plans called for a lander and orbiter, with the latter also deploying impact penetrators. In its current form, Luna 25 is a lander only, with a primary mission of proving out the landing technology. The mission will carry of scientific instruments, including a robotic arm for soil samples and possible drilling hardware. The launch is currently scheduled to occur in July 2023 on a

Soyuz-2.1b Soyuz-2 (GRAU index 14A14) is a modernized version of the Soviet Soyuz rocket. In its basic form, it is a three-stage launch vehicle for placing payloads into low Earth orbit. Compared to the previous versions of the Soyuz, the first-stage bo ...

rocket with

Fregat Fregat (russian: Фрегат, ''frigate'') is an upper stage developed by NPO Lavochkin in the 1990s, which is used in some Soyuz and Zenit launch vehicles, but is universal and can be used as a part of a medium and heavy class launch vehicles ...

upper stage, from

Vostochny Cosmodrome The Vostochny Cosmodrome (russian: Космодром Восточный, ''Kosmodrom Vostochny'', "Eastern Spaceport") is a Russian spaceport (still partly under construction) above the 51st parallel north in the Amur Oblast, in the Russian ...

Science payload

The lander will feature a payload composed by 9 notional science instruments: * ADRON-LR, active neutron and gamma-ray analysis of regolith * ARIES-L, measurement of

plasma Plasma or plasm may refer to: Science * Plasma (physics), one of the four fundamental states of matter * Plasma (mineral), a green translucent silica mineral * Quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics Biology * Blood pla ...

in the exosphere * LASMA-LR, laser mass-spectrometer * LIS-TV-RPM, infrared spectrometry of minerals and imaging * PmL, measurement of dust and micro-meteorites * THERMO-L, measurement of the thermal properties of regolith * STS-L, panoramic and local imaging * Laser

retroreflector A retroreflector (sometimes called a retroflector or cataphote) is a device or surface that reflects radiation (usually light) back to its source with minimum scattering. This works at a wide range of angle of incidence, unlike a planar mirror, ...

, Moon libration and ranging experiments * BUNI, power and science data support LINA-XSAN, a Swedish payload, was to fly with Luna 25, but delays to the launch date caused Sweden to cancel this plan. Instead, LINA-XSAN flew on

Chang'e 4 Chang'e 4 (; ) is a robotic spacecraft mission, part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. China achieved humanity's first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, on 3 January 2019. A communication relay satellite, ...

in 2019. ESA's PILOT-D navigation demonstration camera was planned to be flown on this mission, but is already being procured from a commercial service provider and will fly along with them on their mission due to continued international collaboration has been thrown into doubt by the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

and related sanctions on Russia.

References

External links

Lunar and Planetary Department Moscow University

Soviet Luna Chronology

{{Future spaceflights Missions to the Moon Russian space probes Russian lunar exploration program 2023 in Russia 2023 in spaceflight Proposed space probes

History

Mission

Science payload

See also

References

External links