Launch «Luna-25» 2023
At the Vostochny Cosmodrome, work continues to prepare for the launch of the “Luna-25” spacecraft (SC), which was designed and manufactured at the Lavochkin Association (part of Roscosmos State Corporation).
In the period from July 12 to July 16, 2023, specialists of the Lavochkin Association carried out complete electrical and pneumovacuum inspections as stipulated in the operational documentation. The results are positive and there are no comments.
It is planned that the spacecraft will perform a soft landing on the surface of the Moon near the South Pole and conduct contact research of the lunar soil for the presence of ice at the landing site.
The “Luna-25” SC is being built using fully Russian component base and the latest achievements in the field of space instrumentation. The main task of the mission is to test basic technologies of soft landing in the near-polar region and to conduct contact research of the Moon’s South Pole.
The “Luna-25” SC is fundamentally different from its predecessors in terms of landing. Soviet lunar stations carried out the moon landing in the equatorial zone while the new station will have to provide a soft landing in the circumpolar region with a complex terrain for the first time.
The Luna-25 SC is scheduled to be launched in August 2023.
The M.V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences has calculated the location of the “Luna-25” spacecraft crash on the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft fell into the 42-kilometer crater Pontecoulant G, located in the southern hemisphere near Pontecoulant Circus. Read More details (russian language)
In accordance with the flight program of the automatic station “Luna-25”, August 19 was provided for the issue of an impulse to form its pre-launch elliptical orbit.
At about 14:57 Moscow time communication with the automatic station was interrupted. Actions implemented on August 19 and 20 to search for “Luna-25” and communication with it did not yield any results.
According to the results of preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of actual pulse parameters from the calculated ones, the automatic station entered an uncalculated orbit and ceased to operate as a result of a collision with the Moon’s surface.
A specially formed interdepartmental committee will investigate the reasons for the loss of “Luna-25”.
The “Luna-25” spacecraft built at the Lavochkin Association* during its flight along the circular orbit of the artificial satellite of the Moon conducted several activations of the scientific equipment created at SRI RAS.
Analyzing these data, specialists of SRI RAS obtained the following results:
– In the energy spectrum of gamma rays, the neutron and gamma-ray spectrometer ADRON-LR registered the most intense lines of chemical elements of the lunar soil;
– For the first time, the ion energy-mass analyzer ARIES-L, designed to study the near-surface ion exosphere in the subpolar region of the Moon, was included in the orbit of the Moon. The data obtained made it possible to select the optimal mode of operation of the instrument on the lunar surface to measure the energy spectra of particles in the energy range from 10 eV to 3000 eV;
– The PML instrument, designed to record microparticles levitating near the Moon’s surface and to determine the parameters of the surrounding plasma, recorded a micrometeorite impact event. Most probably, this micrometeorite belongs to the Perseid meteor stream, which the “Luna-25” spacecraft was able to successfully cross during the flight to the Moon;
– Based on the results of the processing of two frames of lunar photography taken on August 17 by the STS-L landing cameras, specialists from SRI RAS and the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK) have georeferenced the digital terrain model. This technology will make it possible in the future to significantly improve the accuracy of knowledge of the spacecraft orbit.
Zeeman Crater, footage of two landing cameras of the STS-L television system onboard the “Luna-25” spacecraft on 17.08.2023 during the flight along the orbit of the artificial satellite of the Moon. Background image: data from the LROC camera of the LRO spacecraft (NASA). Photo: SRI RAS
These images show the Zeeman crater, named after Dutch Nobel Prize-winning physicist Pieter Zeeman. This crater is truly unique. In the list of the twenty deepest craters in the southern hemisphere of the Moon, it is in third place. It has an unusual size ratio: diameter – about 190 km, depth – about 8 km. Its creation is related to a very strong impact, which is possible if the velocity of the impactor is very high or its substance is very dense.
Detailed photographs show that the bottom of the crater is mottled with smaller ones. This happens if some of the material ejected during the impact fell back and created numerous small “potholes”. Such formations are very interesting from the point of view of lunar geology.
* is a part of Roscosmos State Corporation