Russia postponed the flight to the moon for the seventh time

"Roscosmos" has again postponed the launch of the "Luna-25" station - the first Russian project in half a century to fly to the Earth's satellite, writes finanz.ru.

The launch of the station, which was originally planned for 2014, has been postponed for the seventh time in a row — from October 2021 to May 2022. During the inspection under the conditions of the experiment, "the need for additional confirmation of the declared characteristics of the devices, aggregates and propulsion plant" was revealed, the press service of the state corporation told RIA Novosti.

It is necessary to ensure the reliability of the first mission to the moon in the modern history of Russia, Roskosmos emphasized. The previous apparatus — "Lunu-24" — was launched by the Soviet Union in 1976.

A source in the space industry told Gazete.ru that the entire set of scientific instruments developed at IKI RAS has been ready for a long time and has passed testing, and the next launch postponement is due to the unreadiness of the mission's other service systems.

The developers will not have time to complete the preparation of the device, which was intended as a pass back into the club of major space powers, by October. "There is too little time," admits Academician Yury Balega, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "Luna-25 will not fly this year."


After a series of failed interplanetary missions and the degradation of the space industry to the level of a "hauler" dropping astronauts and satellites into orbit, scientists are afraid of another fiasco. "The first Russian expedition to the south pole of the Moon should be successful," explains Igor Mitrofanov, head of the Department of Nuclear Planetology of the Institute of Space Research (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. — We will fly when the results of all tests are positive. We will try as long as it takes to clean up all the tails."

According to Mitrofanov, all lessons have been learned from the failures of Mars-96 and Phobos-Grunt.

The longest-running "long-haul" in Russian space, "Luna-25" has been delayed so many times that Sweden has already withdrawn from the project. Tired of waiting, the Swedes placed their instruments on board the Chinese lunar rover Jade Hare. There is no end in sight to this, laments Academician Mikhail Marov, who took part in several Soviet interplanetary missions, including the delivery of lunar soil to Earth.

"We forgot how to land on the moon," he laments. "In the 70s, we did it repeatedly, and now we have lost everything that ensured our achievements."