Luna 25: Russian mission to the moon

Moscow is hoping to become the first country to land on the lunar south pole. But why does it matter? I’m joined now by the space scientist and author, Dr David Whitehouse.

Chris - The sound of the launch of Luna 25, which is Russia's first mission to the moon in almost half a century, Moscow's gonna become the first country to land, they think on the lunar South Pole. But why does this matter and why are they doing it with, with us now to explain is space scientist and author Dr. David Whitehouse, what can you tell us about the mission, David?

David - It’s the first Russian mission to land on the moon for 50 years. It's been a long time coming. There are major components of this lander which are decades old. And in fact, the propulsion system which was put together six years ago, has been waiting for the money and the effort to come together to launch this. But launch it they have. It entered lunar orbit yesterday, I believe. And on Monday, if all goes well, they should be landing at Boguslawsky crater, which is near the South Pole of the moon, just two days before the Indians put their craft in a nearby region not far away. So exciting times for landing on the moon.

Chris - Like a space race, but this time, India vs Russia.

David - Well, India has been planning this for quite a few years because they did try in 2019 to land on the South Pole with their Vikram lander. And that crashed indeed. Israel, India,Japan and the United Arab Emirates have tried to land on the moon in recent years and they have all crashed. So India is returning and has hopes for exploring the South Pole of the moon quite intensively along with the United States, which is going to send several probes to that region. Russia is slightly different in the sense that Luna 25 took a long time to get off and it remains to be seen just how they can follow it up. They want this mission to last a year on the moon, which will be extraordinary. It remains to be seen how many subsequent missions they've got, but if they do achieve the feat of the first to land at the South Pole and dig into the lunar dirt and analyse it for ice, that would be a major achievement and they'll be pleased about that.

Chris - What are the main goals of the mission apart from looking for ice, presumably, because that's a source of water and if we want to base on the moon, that's a prerequisite.

David - Well, that's right. The south pole is going to be the place where all the action is on the moon because of the ice which is there and because it's possible to get, in certain regions, solar power the whole month long. If you have a base at the lunar equator, then you have two weeks of light and two weeks of darkness, and that gets very cold in the darkness and you don't have access to this water resource. So if they can make the first measurements, they've got six or seven very sophisticated bits of kit on board the lander, and they're going to scoop up the soil and they're going to analyse it. They should give us the first real closeup, hard data of what is actually at the South Pole in the. That's because, prior to this, we've only had observations from satellites in orbit. So that would be a major scientific achievement. They would be very pleased. But there are going to be, over the next 18 months or so, building up to the human landing, there are going to be probably 8 to 10 missions going into this region, making various kinds of measurements themselves.

Chris - Because NASA have got their Artemis mission heading there. Is that all going to plan? Because that has the aim of having a human on the surface of the moon pretty soon, isn't it?

大卫——好吧,两个人的计划是2025年. There was a mission in 2024 where a crew of four would fly around the moon, and then they would land on the moon a year later. That's slipping slightly perhaps because it's likely that Artemis 3, the first lander, would actually become an uncrewed mission, and Artemis 4 might be the lander. And the problem with that is that the actual landing craft, which is to go on the moon, is to be produced by Elon Musk's SpaceX. There's Starship, a very impressive craft if it works. And it hasn't worked so far. They've had one big test, which was a major disaster. It blew up very quickly after taking off. They're investigating that. And the rumour is there'll be another test within a few weeks or so, but they really have to get that working properly in order for NASA to have confidence that they can put their astronauts down on the surface of the moon. And that is not there yet.