MOSCOW, Aug 16 Luna-25 interplanetary station on Wednesday during the day it turned out to be closer to the Earth's satellite than the Indian apparatus Chandrayaan-3 launched a month earlier, the source said.
«Ballistically at 12 o'clock, Luna-25 is 50 kilometers closer to the Moon than Chandrayaan,» the source said.
The Soyuz 2.1b rocket with Luna- 25″ launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome at 2:11 Moscow time on August 11.
The device should become the first station to make a soft landing in the region of the south pole of the moon with difficult terrain. All its predecessors landed in the equatorial zone. Home The 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.
The Indian automatic space station Chandrayaan-3 was launched into space on July 14, it reached the lunar orbit on 5 August. The station conducted a rendezvous maneuver with the Moon on August 14, lowering the orbit to 150 and 177 kilometers at perigee and apogee. The Indian Space Agency announced two days later that it was preparing to descend the station to the Moon and lowered the orbit to 153 and 163 kilometers. Chandrayan landing is expected on August 23.