After 47 years, Russia has sent a spacecraft to find water on the moon's surface. After 1976, Russia sent the Luna-25 spacecraft to the South Pole of the Moon.
The spacecraft was launched on Friday (August 11) local time from the Vostochny launch site in Russia's Amur region.
According to the report of the Russian media RT, the search for water in the satellite has been going on for a long time, mainly with the aim of verifying the feasibility of building a human settlement on the moon. Now Russia joined the race. The country's spacecraft Luna-25 will search for water sources at the moon's South Pole.
RT reports that the spacecraft will reach lunar orbit in five days. It will then take three to seven days to choose the right spot before landing in the lunar South Polar Region.
However, the Russian space research institute Roscosmos said that if everything goes well, Luna-25 will land on the south pole of the moon on August 21. If the landing is successful, it will land on the lunar pole two days before the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3. However, Chandrayaan-3 was launched from Earth a week before Luna-25.
For the first time in history, the spacecraft is going to land on the south pole of the moon. Previously, all spacecraft sent to the Moon had landed on or near the moon's equator.
Analysts believe that this campaign is being conducted by Moscow in parallel with India.
In 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. However, the first spacecraft to reach the moon was the then Soviet Union. The mission known as Luna-2 landed on the moon in 1959. Another mission named Luna-9 was launched in 1966. It was the first mission to perform a soft landing on the Moon.
But Moscow then focused on exploring Mars, and since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has failed to send a mission beyond Earth orbit.
Major Powers such as the United States, China, India, Japan and the European Union have been working on lunar missions in recent years. However, a Japanese lunar mission last year and an Israeli mission in 2019 failed.
No country has yet made a soft landing on the South Pole of the Moon. The Indian mission Chandrayaan-2 failed to do so in 2019. Landing in this region of the moon is difficult because of the rough terrain. But the discovery of water in this part will undoubtedly be a historic event.