Russia Shoots for the Moon
 

https://www.politico.eu/article/russ...ladimir-putin/

Russia shoots for the moon as space race against US heats up

Despite war and sanctions, Vladimir Putin is trying to haul Russia back into the space race.

In the early hours of Friday morning, state space agency Roscosmos is poised to launch the country's first lunar mission in nearly half a century as an ambitious play in the scramble to build a base on the moon.

“If they pull it off, it will be a massive technological and scientific achievement,” said Tim Marshall, author of "The Future of Geography" on the geopolitics of space. He argues a successful Russian landing, and fruitful year of research, would mark a big step forward in plans to build a moon base with China by the 2030s.….

According to the early reports launch went OK.

Strange - I guess with the Chinese and India getting involved the Russians want to get a marker down of some sort

Both the US and USSR lost interest in landing anything on the Moon in the early 70s, I suspect but haven't checked that the last American soft landing was in Dec '72 ;)...plenty of orbiters and flybys since and of course if somebody finds water it will potentially be a game changer.

Russian (TASS) take on the why now etc here (Google translate looks to do a decent job on the language):

Luna 25

Luna 25 went into Lunar orbit a couple of days back and is now starting to return images:

https://www.space.com/russia-luna-25...o-moon-surface

Russian state-backed media channel RIA is reporting issues with the Russian Luna-25 lander, currently having trouble in orbit around the moon.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b47c32c742.png
Great thread from Scott on what this actually means:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...274576500.html
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For info with regard to one comment in that link the Soviets/Russians have always had problems with deep/deepish space comms with traffic at equatorial and more southerly declinations, the current geopolitical adventures haven't really made that much of a difference..

Hence over the years they've on and off had a small fleet of ocean going vessels equipped with a formidable amount of comms hardware, one example here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet..._Yuriy_Gagarin

Seems, from multiple Russian sources, the pre-landing burn was at 1.5 times the planned impulse.

Those calculating the effect suggest it put the orbit sub-surface…

​​​​​​​If it started at 91 x 113 km and was heading for 18 x 100, a 50% overburn would put it at -15 x 100 km (oops).

Well that has been confirmed…. though I doubt the moon came off worse as indicated…

Roscosmos reports that the Russian Luna-25 lander "ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface"


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6394ea8cb2.png

Last line… “The loss of the Moon.”

Lights out tonight, then?

Ukrainian Drone Operations Centre maintains its usual discreet silence. Read into that what you will.

Did Roscosnos steal code from Boeing? This is very Starliner.

​​​​​​​You never know what you're going to see watching a Roscosmos stream of a Progress launch.

But truly I never expected this….