The first Russian mission “Luna-25” to a natural satellite of the Earth “would have looked good at the beginning of 2000,” and now the Chinese Chang'e 4 is less ambitious, Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (USA), told RIA Novosti.
According to him, China's Chang'e 5 poses a threat that Luna-25 will generally become a rudiment. Speaking about the Russian lunar program, the expert noted its “lag after many years of delays” from the corresponding projects of the United States and China.
The specialist called the Chang'e 5 spacecraft more functional than the Soviet E-8-5 series, which were used in the 1960s-1970s to deliver lunar soil samples to Earth. The expert linked possible difficulties in the implementation of this Chinese mission to the moon with the need to dock in a circumlunar orbit when returning to Earth.
In November, China launched a Long March-5 heavy rocket with the Chang'e 5 mission from the Wenchang cosmodrome, during which it is planned to deliver lunar soil samples to Earth within 23 days. The USA and the USSR did a similar thing about 40 years ago.
In January 2019, the China National Space Administration released a video of the world's first soft landing on the far side of the moon. The lander with the 140-kilogram lunar rover of the Chang'e 4 mission made a soft landing in the South Pole-Aitken basin on January 3. Before that, no country in the world had landed on the far side of the moon. The launch of the Long March 3B medium-class rocket with a lunar station took place in December 2019 from the Xichang cosmodrome (southwestern Sichuan province).
In June 2018, NASASpaceFlight.com reported that the first Russian lunar mission Luna-25 (Luna-Glob) is facing technical, political and ballistic problems.
The last Soviet mission to the Moon (Luna-24), during which soil samples were delivered to Earth from a satellite, took place in 1976. In the course of the already Russian mission “Luna-25”, it is planned to send a descent vehicle, which is to land in the area of the Boguslavsky crater near the south pole of the moon. The launch of the Russian mission, originally scheduled for 2016, has been repeatedly postponed. Currently, the launch of Luna 25 is scheduled for 2021.
