Russia's Luna-25 South Pole Lander: First Close-up Moon Image
[No Audio] Russia's Luna-25 lunar lander mission captured an image of the Zeeman crater located on the Moon's far side, near its south pole, on August 17, 2023. Zeeman crater is not directly visible from the Earth. Russia launched an uncrewed spacecraft, called Luna-25, Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, designed to land on the south pole of the Moon—the country's first robotic lunar mission since 1976. Russia seeks to become the first nation to make a soft landing on the Moon’s icy south pole.
Luna-25 will attempt a soft landing on the lunar surface, north of the Boguslawsky crater, on Aug. 21, 2023, according to Roscosmos. Boguslawsky is a lunar impact crater that is located near the Moon's southern lunar limb.
This timetable puts Russia in a race with India, which launched a similar mission—the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander—last month and is aiming to soft-land on the Moon's south pole by Aug. 23. “We hope to be first,” Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov reportedly said at Luna-25's launch.
Borisov, director general of Roscosmos, hailed the Aug. 21 launch as a “new page” for Russian space exploration. “All the results of the research will be transferred to Earth,” he said on state television. “We are interested in the presence of water, as well as many other experiments related to the study of the soil, the site.” He noted that the mission is bound to face some “obstacles” along the way.
Video Credit: ИКИ РАН/Роскосмос
Acknowledgement: SciNews
Duration: 1 minute, 30 seconds
Release Date: Aug. 17, 2023
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