MOSCOW, April 14, by Nikolay Guryanov. Returning to the Moon is a strategic necessity, Russian scientists say. In their opinion, the development of the «seventh continent» can be compared in importance with the creation of nuclear weapons. What and how they will look for on the natural satellite of the Earth is in the material .
Water has changed everything
The USSR and the USA achieved outstanding results in lunar exploration in the 1960s and 70s. The Soviet Union never sent a man there, but did a great job with the help of automatic devices. So, «Lunokhod-2» traveled on the surface of the Earth's satellite for about 40 kilometers. In addition, samples of lunar soil were delivered. The last time the probe «Luna-24» did this was in 1976.
Then the leading powers focused on other programs: the USSR and later Russia — on the development of near-Earth stations, the USA — on deep space exploration.
But at the end of the 2000s, the LEND instrument, developed by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and installed on the American LRO orbiter, detected signs of water in the subpolar regions of the Moon. Later, these data were repeatedly confirmed. Thus, a large amount of water ice was noticed at the bottom of the Shackleton crater at the south pole.
Extraterrestrial water is an invaluable source of scientific knowledge about the structure of the Universe and an important resource for space exploration. Such water can be used both for the life support of astronauts on a lunar base, and for the production of rocket fuel — due to the electrolysis of ice into hydrogen and oxygen. jpg» media-type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.950570342205323″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»570″ data-source-sid=»rian_photo» class=»lazyload» width=»1920″ height=»1825″ decoding=»async» />
Whereas during the Space Race Soviet Lunas and American Apollos landed at mid-latitudes because it was more convenient, now everyone is aiming for the South Pole.
In 2025 or 2026, NASA plans to land two astronauts in the area, including a woman. This is part of the Artemis program, which involves the launch of the station into lunar orbit (2027) and the creation of a habitable base on the moon (after 2028).
In 2025, the Chinese station Chang'e-6 will fly to the south pole of the satellite «. China has several more missions planned.
Several launches are expected in 2023. Masten Space Systems, a private company, will send reconnaissance equipment to the south of the Moon commissioned by NASA, Japan — an intelligent landing module (SLIM), India — the Chandrayaan-3 probe.
However, the first station in history in the southern subpolar region of the Moon should be the Russian one.
Return lost knowledge
This idea arose in the 1990s at the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( GEOHI). Scientists wanted to test the hypothesis of the formation of the moon. According to the ideas prevailing in science, a natural satellite is the result of a collision with the Earth of another planet — Theia. Russian geochemists had a different version: the Earth and the Moon were formed separately from a single gas and dust cloud.
It was supposed to launch the Luna-Glob orbiter. Then a small landing station was added. However, they did not receive funding at that time. width=»600″ data-crop-height=»631″ data-source-sid=»cc_by-sa_40″ class=»m-vertical lazyload» width=»1920″ height=»2019″ decoding=»async» />
The GEOKHI initiative was taken up by IKI RAS. The concept was changed to focus on a landing station for reconnaissance of the south pole.
To emphasize continuity with the Soviet program, the module was named «Luna-25». The project being implemented at the NPO named after Lavochkin was significantly slowed down by Western sanctions. A lot had to be reworked.
The scientific component of the mission was greatly curtailed, pushing the engineering to the fore. The most important task of Luna-25 is to work out a soft landing. Over the past decades, competencies have been lost, everything has to be mastered anew. This is not only a Russian problem. Already in the 21st century, several missions of other countries (Israel, India) ended in the loss of landers, and only China managed to land on the moon the first time. » media-type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.694604682728198″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»417″ data-source-sid=»rian_photo» class=»lazyload» width =»1920″ height=»1334″ decoding=»async» />
In 2022, Dmitry Rogozin, then head of Roskosmos, promised President Vladimir Putin that the mission would start in the fall, but it turned out that the landing radar, the Vega laser rangefinder, did not meet the terms of reference.
In winter 2023 On the 1st, the new head of the state corporation, Yuri Borisov, said that the problematic device had been finalized, the station was ready, and it was only necessary to wait for the launch window, when the Moon was closest to the Earth. The preliminary date is July 13.
«We have finally reached the limit when it is impossible to retreat — «Moscow is behind us,» said Lev Zeleny, academician, scientific director of the IKI RAS, deputy chairman of the Space Council of the RAS, at a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya news agency.
«Staying away is not good»
Luna-25 will be launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome on a Soyuz-2 carrier rocket, and the Fregat upper stage will put it on the desired trajectory. The mass of the spacecraft is 1750 kilograms, about a ton is accounted for by fuel. The term of the station is one year. The module should land on the moon north of the Boguslavsky crater at a latitude of about 70 degrees (the reserve area is southwest of the Manzini crater). There is a suitable relief, good visibility from the Earth, illumination by the Sun.
«Luna-25» will open a series of numbered missions. In 2026, it is planned to launch the Luna-26 orbiter, which will conduct global reconnaissance of the Earth satellite and help select the base construction area.
In 2027 Luna-27 with a drilling rig should fly . It explores subsurface ice and polar permafrost.
Then, the Luna-28 unmanned takeoff and landing ship will bring regolith samples to Earth. The task is not trivial — scientists are not interested in the soil itself, but in the volatile substances and organic molecules contained in it, but during drilling they can evaporate.
“Therefore, it is necessary to drill without heating. Everyone who has made a hole in the wall understands that drilling is always associated with heating. But here we must separate these two processes. Take soil, drill, but do not heat the substance,” Zeleny explained.< br />
And after that, a manned mission.
“By the middle of the 30s, not only the Americans, who announced this, but also the Chinese, who did not announce it, but, I’m sure, are slowly doing it, will be on the moon,” the scientist noted. “And, of course, it will not be good for us to remain on the sidelines.”
Russia is negotiating cooperation in lunar exploration with China, but, according to Zeleny, «the specific content has not yet been determined.»
Property of all mankind — or only the USA?
A manned station on the Moon will make it possible to solve both scientific and practical problems. In particular, it is possible to ensure continuous monitoring of the Earth and the Sun, conduct biomedical research and develop technologies for the exploration of other planets in the solar system (first of all, of course, Mars). There are projects to use the Earth's satellite as a «jump spaceport» for deep space missions.
In addition, the Moon is promising in terms of resource extraction — it is a pantry of rare and rare earth elements, without which modern technological development is impossible. They are brought to the Moon mainly by metal asteroids.
«It is important that these resources are decreasing on Earth, and over the past ten years 700 new craters have appeared on the Moon, and some of them are most likely created by metal asteroids,» he specified Green.
In Russia, there is a shortage of these elements. They bought it abroad, the sanctions blocked this channel. In addition, the extraction of rare earth metals is increasingly expensive. According to scientists, the delivery of valuable resources from the Moon may become economically justified in the foreseeable future.
«Rich countries — the United States, Luxembourg, the Emirates — are already spending significant funds on this direction,» explains Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Scientific Director of the Institute astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Shustov: “They understand that in a few decades, and maybe even earlier for some elements, this issue will be very critical.”
The deterrent is legal. The extraction of resources in space is regulated by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Agreement on the Activities of States on the Moon of 1979. The first imposes a ban on national sovereignty over any celestial body. The second defines the resources of the Moon and other objects in space as the property of all mankind, which cannot be used in the interests of an individual state.
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However, neither the United States, nor Russia, nor other permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G7 have ratified the 1979 document. In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing Americans' right to mine minerals in space.
, which provoked a sharp protest from Russia.
According to Zeleny, the new lunar race in strategic importance can only be compared with the pre-war situation, when physicists from several countries realized the importance of the uranium fission process. “The leaders of the states who listened to the voice of scientists and made nuclear weapons became the leaders of the post-war world, and everyone else was in the tail,” he says. “Now, although in a more peaceful plane, the same situation is emerging.” Therefore, Russia must do everything not to lose the Moon.