Chandrayaan-3 could be beaten to the lunar south pole by Russian Luna 25 rockets
On a Soyuz rocket, the Russian space agency Roscosmos launched the Luna-25 mission at 4 AM (tentative) on Friday, April 11, from the Vosthochny cosmodrome in the far east of the nation. Despite taking off almost a month after Chandrayaan-3, Russia's first lunar landing mission since 1976 may arrive at the lunar south pole first.
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According to AP, the Russian mission will take around five and a half days to reach the Moon, where it will spend three to seven days in an orbit of 100 kilometers before touching down. This would indicate that Chandrayaan-3 and Luna-25 will both touch down on August 23.
According to Reuters, the lunar south pole is a sought-after target because it might contain large amounts of ice that might be used to extract oxygen and fuel for upcoming space exploration. Now, India and Russia are vying to be the first nation to send a probe to the south pole.
Roscosmos stated in a previous statement that Luna-25 will analyze soil samples and carry out a long-term scientific study on the Moon's surface in addition to showing soft-landing capabilities.
A lander, an orbiter, and a rover are all aboard the Chandrayaan-3 expedition. The Vikram lander and Pragyan rover of Chandrayaan-3, in contrast to Luna-25, are intended to operate for a total of 14 days on the lunar surface.
Since the Soviet Union's dissolution, 47 years have passed since Russia's last lunar expedition. (USSR) It's interesting to note that no equipment from the European Space Agency (ESA) is being used for the trip. According to a report from Euro News, this is because the space agency severed connections with Roscosmos following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
According to Space.com, Luna 25 will be Russia's first entirely domestic deep-space mission since November 2011. Its Fobos-Grunt spacecraft blasted off toward Mars at that time.
However, the spacecraft never really traveled that far since it became stranded in Earth's orbit and finally caught fire in the planet's atmosphere. The Schiaparelli Mars lander, which the Russian and European Space Agencies collaborated on, also failed when it collided with the planet.
However, the nation had already made several soft lunar landings decades earlier, when it was still a part of the USSR. At the time, a space race had broken out between the US and the USSR. India and China are the other two participants in the present space race.
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