At the beginning of October 2021, the Russian automatic station Luna-25 will be launched to search for water ice, a key resource for the construction of a habitable base.
The device will land in the southern circumpolar latitudes and begin searching for water ice, a key resource for the construction of a habitable base. The goal is a soft landing and scientific research in the circumpolar southern latitudes. The apparatus is from the Lavochkin Research and Production Association, the scientific equipment is from IKI RAS.
“We have to test new engines, on-board equipment, thermal conditions, and safety systems. But the main interest is water. Taking into account technical limitations and scientific requirements, we chose the high-latitude southern region north of the Boguslavsky crater, where, according to models, there may be reserves of water ice. No one I haven’t landed there yet. This is the first polar mission,” explains Igor Mitrofanov. You need to make sure that the remote sensors actually point to water ice. To do this, several experiments will be carried out.
“It was believed that water ice accumulates in natural cold traps in craters at the poles, where the Sun never looks. This hypothesis was tested in the NASA LCROSS experiment in 2009. The Centaurus upper stage crashed into the lunar surface, knocking out a cloud of matter that followed “The probe measured the parameters of this cloud. And the impact site – the Cabeus crater near the South Pole – was chosen based on LEND data,” said the developer of the device, Igor Mitrofanov, head of the nuclear planetology department at the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The soil of Cabeus Crater contains up to six percent water ice. And the most unexpected result of LEND is the discovery of potential water reserves not only in cold traps, but also in illuminated places in the subsurface layer.
On January 31, 1966, the Soviet station Luna 9 was the first to make a soft landing on the surface of the Earth’s satellite. That same year, Luna 10 arrived in orbit. Both spacecraft and all subsequent ones were developed at the S. A. Lavochkin Machine-Building Plant.