Closing The Gap: Russia's Luna 25 enters moon orbit, likely to beat Chandrayaan-3 to the Moon

Russia’s lunar lander, Luna-25, slid into a circular polar orbit around the Moon. The Luna-25 mission is in a race against time with the Chandrayaan-3 module to reach the lunar south pole, following which, both the modules will collect samples and data for a number of studies.

As per the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, the Luna-25 is supposed to circle the moon for a period of 5 days, before it touches down on the lunar south pole on August 21, in a soft landing that’s been carefully choreographed. If it is able to pull this off without any glitches, it will in effect have beaten India’s ISRO and Chandrayaan to the moon.

The Luna-25 marks Russia’s big return to lunar missions, the first since the days of Luna-24 back in 1976. Luna-25 had a fiery lift-off on August 11 from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome, situated way out in the eastern Amur Region.

On August 15, Luna-25 sent home some of the very first pictures it had taken. In the black-and-white snapshots, we see got the Russian flag and the mission patch all displayed on the spacecraft’s body. Plus, there are some stunning shots of both Earth and the Moon.

The primary objective of the Luna-25 mission is to meticulously investigate the elemental structure of the lunar surface, alongside the constituents of its tenuous atmospheric envelope, encompassing plasma and particulate matter. This comprehensive endeavour is slated to span a duration of one year. A pivotal aspiration of this mission involves the systematic exploration of sublunar strata to ascertain the presence of water ice, a substance of pronounced interest.

Luna-25 has recently conjoined the ranks of India’s Chandrayaan-3, which commenced its orbital trajectory subsequent to its launch on July 14. On the auspicious date, August 16, Chandrayaan-3 executed a pivotal thrusting manoeuvre, resulting in its positioning along an orbital path measuring 153 km by 163 km in proximity to the Moon.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission is scheduled to separate the lunar module from its propulsion module later today.