As part of its first lunar lander mission in nearly 50 years, Russia will be evacuating a village in its far east on August 11, Reuters reported citing a local official on Monday. The Luna-25 lunar lander will be launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, which lies around 5,550 kilometres in the east of Moscow, as per Russian space agency Roscosmos. This will be the nation’s first since 1976.
Evacuation
The residents of the Shakhtinskyi settlement in Russia’s Khabarovsk region, lying southeast of the launch site, will be moved early in the morning on August 11, 2023. The village lies in the area where the rocket boosters have been predicted to fall after they separate.
Alexei Maslov, the head of the Verkhnebureinskyi district in the Khabarovsk region, wrote on Telegram, “The mouth of the Umalta, Ussamakh, Lepikan, Tastakh, Saganar rivers and the area of the ferry crossing on the Bureya River fall into the predicted (booster) fall zone.” “The residents of Shakhtinskyi will be evacuated,” Maslov added.
About Luna-25 mission
The Luna-25 lunar lander will be launched using a Soyuz-2 Fregat booster. It will be the first lander to arrive on the South Pole of the Moon, the Russian Space Agency said. It is expected to operate on the Moon for one year.
The main objective of the mission will be the development of soft-landing technologies, research of the internal structure of the Moon and exploration for resources, including water.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission
The Chandrayaan-3 mission launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation on July 14 also aims to carry out a soft-landing on Moon’s South Pole. The spacecraft will attempt a soft-landing on August 23, 2023. If successful, India will become the first nation to land near the little-explored South Pole. It will also be only the fourth nation to achieve a soft-landing on the Moon, after the US, China and former Soviet Union.
Earlier on Saturday, The Indian Space Research Organisation on Sunday shared the first images of the Moon captured by India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission on August 5, 2023, after entering lunar orbit.
