Lunar 25: Russian space agency launches craft to moon - the first time in 50 years

Russia has launched a rocket carrying a lunar landing craft has blasted their first moon mission in nearly 50 years.

The Luna-25 mission blasted off on Friday (11 August) from a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far eastern Amur Region.

The last Russian lunar launch took place by the Soviet Union in 1976, when Luna-24 successfully delivered about 6.2 ounces (170 grams) of moon samples to Earth.

The Russian lunar lander is expected to reach the moon on 21 August, about the same day as an Indian craft which was launched on 14 July.

The Russian spacecraft will take about 5.5 days to travel to the moon’s vicinity, then spend three to seven days orbiting at about 62 miles before heading for the surface.

Once down, the Lunar-25 will work on the moon for at least one year.

Only three governments have managed successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the United States and China. India and Russia are aiming to be the first to land at the moon’s south pole.

Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, said it wants to show Russia “is a state capable of delivering a payload to the moon”, and “ensure Russia’s guaranteed access to the moon’s surface”.

“Study of the moon is not the goal,” said Vitaly Egorov, a popular Russian space analyst.

“The goal is political competition between two superpowers – China and the USA – and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower.”

Russian's space programme was impacted after sanctions were imposed after it invaded Ukraine make it harder for it to access Western technology.

The Luna-25 was initially meant to carry a small moon rover but that idea was abandoned to reduce the weight of the craft for improved reliability, analysts say.

“Foreign electronics are lighter, domestic electronics are heavier,” Mr Egorov said.

“While scientists might have the task of studying lunar water, for Roscosmos the main task is simply to land on the moon — to recover lost Soviet expertise and learn how to perform this task in a new era.”

The spaceport is a project of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is key to his efforts to make Russia a space superpower and move Russian launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists as the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. The frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.

“The moon is largely untouched and the whole history of the moon is written on its face,” said Ed Bloomer, an astronomer at Britain’s Royal Observatory, Greenwich. “It is pristine and like nothing you get on Earth. It is its own laboratory.”

The Luna-25 is to take samples of moon rock and dust as the samples are crucial to understanding the moon’s environment ahead of building any base there, “otherwise we could be building things and having to shut them down six months later because everything has effectively been sand-blasted”, Mr Bloomer said.