Russian and Indian probes attempt moon landing to find ice – 08/19/2023 – Science

Two probes, one Russian and one Indian, are in a race to perform a soft landing at the moon’s south pole, where pockets of ice may be present.

If everything goes according to plan, both should land next week – and one of them will be the first to accomplish the unprecedented feat of finding ice on Earth’s natural satellite.

One such probe is Luna-25, operated by Roscosmos, Moscow’s space agency. The module’s journey began on Aug. 11, when the Soyuz rocket that propelled the probe lifted off from the Vostochni space base in Russia’s far east.

Already last Wednesday (16), the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, where it should remain about 100 kilometers from the surface before its landing in the Boguslawsky crater, at the south pole, scheduled for Monday (21).

Luna-25 is expected to sample and record Earth’s natural satellite for a year. Last Sunday (13), the cameras installed in the module already sent their first photographs taken in space. In the images, it is possible to see part of the probe and, in the background, the Earth and the Moon.

Another probe in the race to possibly collect ice on the Moon is India’s Chandrayaan-3. According to Isro (Indian Space Research Organization), the spacecraft entered lunar orbit on August 5 – the launch took place on July 14.

This Thursday (17), the lunar module separated from the rocket to which it was attached. Now, Chandrayaan-3 remains in orbit around the Moon, with a landing expected for next Wednesday (23rd) or Thursday (24th). The rocket, on the other hand, must travel in order to generate data on whether exoplanets, those located outside the solar system, are habitable for humans.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has a landing module, called Vikram (Sanskrit for courage), and a “rover”, a mobile robot, Pragyan (Sanskrit for wisdom), which will explore the lunar surface.

It is not the first time that India has attempted a soft landing on the natural satellite. But last time, in 2019, Chandrayaan-2, another mission from the same program, failed to do so, and ground teams lost contact with the spacecraft shortly before its arrival on the Moon.

Russia, on the other hand, has not carried out such an undertaking for a long time. The last time the country launched a module towards the Moon was in 1976, when the then Soviet Union was competing in the space race with the USA.

difficulties

Chances of something unexpected occurring during a soft moon landing are there. In addition to Chandrayaan-2 itself, there has recently been the case of the Japanese probe Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1).

Operated by the company ispace, the vehicle was supposed to reach the lunar surface on April 25. But minutes before the soft landing operation ended, technicians lost communication with the module.

The company tried to take back the controls, but there was no response, causing, moments later, company executives to admit that the attempt had been a failure. ispace said the main hypothesis is that a problem in the supply of fuel affected the procedure, resulting in a forced landing of the module against the lunar soil.

If it had happened as expected, Japan would be the fourth country to perform a soft landing on lunar soil – the USA, Russia and China are the only ones that have already achieved the feat. As it did not happen, the post of fourth place remains vacant and, if India’s plan works, it will be occupied by the country.

With AFP and Reuters.