Your browser does not support this video format.
VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME (Amur region) , 11 Aug. The Russian automatic station Luna-25 separated from the upper stage Fregat, which put it on a flight path to the Moon, Roskosmos said.
«The Luna-25 station has separated from the Fregat upper stage,» the report says.
The Soyuz 2.1b rocket was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome at 2.11 Moscow time. After 9 minutes, the upper stage «Fregat» with the station «Luna-25» separated from the third stage of the rocket and entered the near-Earth orbit.
The second stage, after the separation of the upper stage from the station, will be the flight of «Luna-25» to the Earth's natural satellite, which will take about five days. Two corrections of the station's flight trajectory are planned: the first — 1.5 days after launch, the second — a day before entering orbit around the Moon.
The third stage will begin with the deceleration of the station with the help of the propulsion system — the flight around the Moon in a circular circumpolar orbit with a height of 100 kilometers, it will last three days. At the fourth stage, Luna-25 will switch to an elliptical landing orbit with a minimum altitude of 18 kilometers. After performing the calculations, a soft landing should occur in the region of the South Pole of the Moon.
«Luna-25» should be the first station to make a soft landing in the area of the South Pole of the Moon with a difficult terrain. All her predecessors landed in the equatorial zone. The main purpose of the station is to conduct contact studies of the lunar soil for the presence of ice. Luna-25 will also be the first lunar station in the history of modern Russia. The last Soviet spacecraft sent to the Earth's satellite was launched in 1976 and was called Luna-24.