Russia launched a spacecraft Friday that is headed to the moon — its first attempt since 1976, around when the Soviet Union and United States were in deep competition for space dominance during the Cold War.
, setting off a space race with the United States. By 1961, the Soviet Union had sent the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, aboard the Vostok 1, making a single orbit around the Earth. But as geopolitical tensions grew on Earth, it was the United States that became the first nation to put a human on the moon when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in 1969.
“All the results of the research will be transferred to Earth,” he said on state television. “We are interested in the presence of water, as well as many other experiments related to the study of the soil, the site.” He noted that the mission is bound to face some “obstacles” along the way. The Luna-25 lander has a four-legged base containing the landing rockets and propellant tanks, as well as an upper compartment holding solar panels, communications equipment, onboard computers and most of the scientific apparatus,Its dry mass is about 800 kilograms — roughly the same as a car trailer — and has a 1.6-meter-long lunar robotic arm equipped with a scoop to remove and collect rocks, soil and dust as it aims to “study composition” of the south pole.
On Friday, Roscosmos said in a Telegram post, “the rocket worked normally, the upper stage separated from the third stage and is now putting the automatic station on a flight trajectory to the Moon!”
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