Russia To Carry Out Moon Missions
October 18, 2010

Russia is planning to study the moon intensively with the assistance of unmanned missions after a break of more than 30 years. It will launch the first missions out of four of the “Lunar-Resource” and the “Lunar-Sphere” missions by the end of 2012 and early 2013. They will carry out preparations for the creation of a permanent fully-robotic base on the moon. Such a base will be an essential element for the future manned missions to the moon. Here are more details from Boris Pavlishev.

Japan, NASA, the European Space Agency, India and China have launched probes to moon since the 90s to draw precise maps and carry out radar sounding. However, no country has landed automatic stations on the moon since the Soviet “Lunakhod” unmanned rovers in the 70s. This means that the Russian automatic stations will be the first to land on the moon in the 21st century. “Lunar-Sphere” is a Russia project that includes a landing vehicle and a lunar satellite, while the second, “Luna-Resource” is a joint project with India. It consists of the same landing vehicle, but an Indian rocket will take it to the moon with a small Indian moon rover.

At present, scientists have gathered much more information about the moon than that they knew when the Soviet “Lunakhods” and American “Apollos” flew there. They are inclined to believe that moon was formed as a result of a giant impact when earth collided with a small dead planet Theia. Consequently, its composition is close to that of our planet. At present scientists do not consider the moon as a dry and uninteresting desert as before.

Perhaps, there are organic materials on the poles of the moon brought by comets. The most interesting thing is that the scientists have discovered signatures of the presence of water in various forms on the moon. The key task of the missions will be the search for water. The probes will be landed on the North and the South poles. There could be water near the poles, especially in the regolith and also as ice between its particles like in Siberia’s permafrost. The presence of water on the moon is extremely interesting for scientists, says the head of a laboratory of the Space Research Institute, Igor Mitrofanov.

“Scientists are unaware of how water came to the moon. Perhaps, comets that fell on it brought it. In the future, water will be the most important resource for the exploration of moon because it gives oxygen for breathing and hydrogen fuel for rockets,” Igor Mitrofanov said.