MOSCOW, Aug 12All four side blocks of the first stage of the Luna-25 satellite rocket were found in the Khabarovsk Territory, the search has been completed, Governor Mikhail Degtyarev said on his Telegram channel.
Earlier, the governor said that the rocket stages of the Luna-25 satellite were found after the fall in the Khabarovsk Territory.
«All four side blocks of the first stage of the rocket that launched Luna-25 into orbit have been found. Searches in the Khabarovsk Territory have been completed,» Degtyarev wrote.
The automatic station «Luna-25» was taken under control after separation from the upper stage «Fregat». The Soyuz 2.1b rocket with the first domestic lunar station Luna-25 in almost 50 years was launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome at 2.11 Moscow time on Friday. After 9 minutes, the upper stage separated from the third stage of the rocket and entered the near-Earth orbit. After another 1 hour 10 minutes, the station separated from the upper stage and entered the flight path to the Earth's natural satellite.
«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».