The launch of the Russian lunar probe Luna-25 into orbit

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, announced that the first Russian lunar probe launched in nearly 50 years, Luna-25, was successfully placed in lunar orbit on Wednesday, August 17. “For the first time in contemporary history Russia An automatic station was put into lunar orbit at 12:03 am Moscow time(11:03 am in Paris), the press office of Roscosmos told AFP. The launch of the Luna-25 probe is Moscow’s first lunar mission since 1976, when the USSR pioneered the conquest of space. “All Luna-25 systems are operating normally, and communication with them is stableAccording to the same source.

And Roskosmos stated in a statement that the orbit was made using the probe’s engine, which was connected twice, starting at 11:57 am Moscow time, the first time for 243 seconds, and the second time for 76 seconds. The agency stated that the probe will orbit the moon, 100 km from its surface, before its scheduled landing on Monday, north of the Bogoslavsky crater on the lunar south pole.

First photos

This Sunday, the cameras installed on the probe took the first pictures from space, where we can see the elements of the probe along with the Earth and the Moon in the distance, Roscosmos announced. The nearly 800-kilogram probe, carried by a Soyuz rocket, took off on the night of August 10-11 from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East.

The probe, which will remain on the moon for a year, will have the task of taking samples and analyzing the lunar soil. “For the first time in history, the moon landing will take place at the lunar south pole. Until now, everyone had been landing in the Tropical Zone”, greeted a senior Roskosmos official, Alexander Blokhin, in a recent interview with the state newspaper Rosska Gazeta.

The mission aims to give a new boost to Russia’s space sector, which has been struggling for years due to funding problems and corruption scandals, and is now isolated by the conflict in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has promised to continue Russia’s space program despite the sanctions, citing the example of the Soviet Union sending its first man into space in 1961, amid rising tensions between East and West.