The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos had launched a space probe on top of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket on August 10. Final destination of the space probe called Luna 25 is far side of the moon, near the south pole of it. Luna 25 is quickly making its journey towards the moon. Specially, much quicker than Indian Chandrayaan 3, as Luna 25 have opted for much more direct route.
Also, as the Luna 25 is in the final stages of its journey, it have already injected itself in orbit around the moon. Luna 25 have recently sent back first picture of moon’s surface. It is a picture of Zeeman crater from far side of the moon near the south pole. Luna 25 is expected to land near south pole on far side of moon at Boguslawsky crater on August 21, 2023. Whereas Chandrayaan 3 of ISRO which was launched much earlier on July 14, 2023 will land at moon on August 23, 2023.
The duration of mission of Luna 25 on the surface of the moon is around one earth year. During which scientific equipment aboard Luna 25 will be used to perform different experiments on the lunar soil as well as the lunar atmosphere. Luna 25 carries around 30 KG of payload which consists of scientific equipments for these experiments.
China was historically the first country to land its space probe on the far side of moon. Now space agencies like the one of India and Russia are in a race to reach the far side of the moon near south pole. The South pole of the moon is relatively very less explored until now and most of the moon missions earlier kept their focus on the other regions of the moon.
But in the latest wave, everyone have their focus on the far side of the moon near south pole. Roscomos’ Luna 25 lander is expected to touch down in same area on 21st of August while Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will make their presence felt in same region with planned soft landing of Vikram lander, which is part of Chandrayaan 3 mission on 23rd August 2023. Chandrayaan 2 was India’s previous attempt to land in same region but they were unable to achieve softlanding, so the spacecraft was destroyed on impact.