• Russia will launch its first lunar landing spacecraft Luna-25 on August 11 in a race with India to the South Pole of the Moon.

• With the lunar mission, Russia’s first since 1976, Moscow is seeking to restart and build on the Soviet Union’s pioneering space programme.

• The launch from the Vostochny cosmodrome will take place four weeks after India sent up its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander.

• This endeavour places Russia in direct competition with India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which is also targeting the lunar South Pole and is due to land later in August.

• Russian space agency Roscosmos said that Luna-25 spacecraft would take five days to fly to the Moon and then spend five to seven days in lunar orbit before descending on one of three possible landing sites near the South Pole.

• The timetable implies it could match or narrowly beat India’s Chandrayaan-3 to the Moon’s surface.

• Roscosmos said the two missions would not get in each other’s way because they have different landing areas planned.

• The launch, originally planned for October 2021, was delayed for nearly two years. The European Space Agency had planned to test its Pilot-D navigation camera by attaching it to Luna-25, but broke off its ties to the project after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

• Luna 25 is also designated the Luna-Glob Lander. 

There are two primary scientific objectives of the mission: 

i) To study composition of the polar regolith.

ii) To study the plasma and dust components of the lunar polar exosphere.

• The lander has a four-legged base containing the landing rockets and propellant tanks, an upper compartment holds the solar panels, communication equipment, on-board computers, and most of the science apparatus.

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