Is Russia Going Back to the Moon This Year? Here's What Officials Claim

Russia is preparing a trip to the Moon's south pole, which will launch this October, Space.com reports.

The Luna 25 mission may be the first Russian moon landing since Luna 24, the country's third lunar sample return mission, launched in 1976.

The mission aims to look at ice deposits that are thought to be deep underneath the Moon's south pole. Such deposits will make maintaining a more permanent presence on the space rock more feasible in the future. Russia also wants to look into the hazards of sharp lunar dust particles, which are another barrier to a long-term human existence on the Moon.

Russian Ice Pirates

Lev Zelenyi, the scientific advisor for the Russian Space Research Institute, who spoke during a virtual presentation on March 23, said Russia plans to send five missions to the Moon over the next ten years, according to Space.com.

But, as Zelenyi pointed out, Luna 25 is just the beginning, with a total of five lunar missions in different stages of growth. Russia plans to launch Luna 26 in 2023 or 2024, this time an orbiter that will search the Moon for magnetic and gravitational disturbances as well as high-resolution capture photographs of possible landing sites.

Then, in 2025, Luna 27 will return to the surface, which Zelenyi described as "the most important." Luna 27, like the lander that will arrive this year, will be aimed at the Moon's south pole and will be equipped with European landing software. A drill that can collect south-pole lunar rock without melting compounds like water ice found in the material will also be a first on the robot, courtesy of the European Space Agency.

The launch dates for the final two missions in the Luna sequence, as stated by Zelenyi, have yet to be determined. Luna 28, also known as Luna-Grunt, will expand on its predecessor by returning to Earth cryogenically stored samples from the lunar south pole that would hold water ice and other "volatile compounds."

"It's sample return, but a different sample return than has been done earlier," Zelenyi said. "It will be ... not just regolith [lunar dirt] but all volatiles and cryogenic inclusions to it, which is technically challenging."

Finally, Luna 29 will be equipped with a new Lunokhod rover, harkening back to Soviet missions once more. Lunokhod-1, the first successful rover on another planet, spent ten months exploring the Mare Imbrium, or Sea of Rains, area in 1970.

Who Will Pull Off This Space Race?

Russia isn't alone in sketching out ambitious lunar exploration programs. The United States' Artemis mission, which includes several robotic moon missions, is aimed at human exploration.

In a still-unfolding sequence of missions called Chang'e, China sent the first fresh lunar samples to Earth in decades in December.

After their lunar landers - named Chandrayaan-2 and Beresheet - crashed-landed on the moon in 2019, Space.com said both India and Israel had vowed to have a follow-up spacecraft.

Only the United States can equal Russia's lunar heritage, which Russia is deliberately exploiting by resuming the Luna series name and enumeration from 1976.

Will any of them succeed? It's likely. But only time and government support will tell.

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