The Russians are preparing to return to the moon

Since the launch of Luna 24 on August 8, 1976 and until today, no Russian spacecraft has been launched to the moon. In 2016 they are planning the big comeback

Since the launch of Luna 24 on August 8, 1976 and until today, no Russian spacecraft has been launched to the moon. The attempts of the Russians to develop powerful launchers to send a man to the moon failed and in the race with the Americans to land a spacecraft on the moon first they suffered a crushing failure. The decision that was made was to cancel all the plans that were related to the moon in favor of the Soliot and Mir space stations. It was in the era of the Cold War. Later, the collapse of the Soviet Union and budget cuts contributed to this. All these must have taken a very long time out. Generations were lost. It took a long time for the Russian space agency to recover and in the meantime a new generation of engineers and space explorers arose.

It wasn't until January 2006 that the first announcement about the Russian space program was made to the media. It was the first message of its kind to go out to the media. In the days of the Soviet Union this would not have happened. According to this statement, there is an intention to establish a colony on the moon in the years 2015-2020 and it will be carried out by means of powerful launchers and by means of the space shuttle Clipper (Klipper) which is supposed to replace the Soyuz spacecraft. The intention of the Russians was to extract Helium 3 from the lunar rocks that would be used in the future as a source of fuel for power plants on Earth. The advantage of this hydrogen isotope is that it does not emit radioactive radiation. The Clipper spacecraft itself can carry six astronauts or 12 tons of cargo. An unmanned launch of the Clipper will be done in 2012 and the first manned launch will be done in 2013.

In April of that year, additional details were provided, according to which with the start of that project, an upgraded Soyuz spacecraft - Soyuz F6 - would be used. This spacecraft will be based on the shuttle Clipper. The first flight to the moon will be made in 2011-2012. There will be no landing, but a circumambulation. The entire lunar program will be done in three stages, launching a Soyuz spacecraft to the moon, establishing a manned base and industrial research of the moon.

A few years passed and in February 2012, the director of the Russian Space Agency, Vladimir Popovkin, announced that the first crew launch to the moon would take place in 2020. The United States and Europe will share in this enterprise. In April, that year, it was announced that the first mission to the moon would be launched in 2030. These differences in statements regarding the lunar plans indicate many difficulties in the development of this ambitious goal. It seems that the first statements had no real basis and that progress should be made at a slower pace. The prolonged hiatus of unmanned flights to the moon probably caused mental stagnation and the financial constraints contributed quite a bit to this. The breakup of the Soviet Union also led to this stagnation. The new administration that began to establish itself was preoccupied with other, more important matters. The cancellation of the Clipper program forced the Russians to continue using the old Soyuz spacecraft, although this spacecraft underwent several upgrades but there was no change in its payload capacity, which extended the time for the realization of the lunar program.

Simultaneously with the planning of the manned flights to the moon, they began to plan unmanned spacecraft to circle the moon and land on its surface. This is actually an expansion of the Luna program. Regarding the first Russian spacecraft that received the name Glob 1 Luna, a lot of detail was given that in itself was not acceptable in the Cold War era, which indicates the openness of the Russian space agency to the media.

The spacecraft will be launched in 2016 and will include a capsule, a lander and a capsule with 12 penetrators that are supposed to detach from the spacecraft and move towards hitting the lunar surface. These interlopers were borrowed from the Japanese space agency. The Japanese developed a spacecraft called Lunar A that was supposed to fly to the moon with these intruders. This Japanese plan was eventually cancelled. The penetrators are contained in a capsule which, near the moon, detaches from the spacecraft and then releases the penetrators in several batches before hitting the lunar surface. 10 of the intruders have a high flight speed and the remaining two have a low flight speed. Each of the ten intruders has a simple seismometer.

Four days after the launch of the spacecraft, when its distance from the moon is 29 hours of flight and 696 km from it, the speed of its revolutions around itself is increased to 20 rpm in order to stabilize it, in preparation for the detachment of the intruder capsule. In the first batch, five intruders are released who fly to the moon in a formation flight and then disperse, each flying towards a different place on the lunar surface. At a distance of 347 km from the ground, a second batch of five intruders was detached. All ten intruders are supposed to be embedded in the soil of the Sea of ​​Fertility.

When they are driven into the ground they create a network of seismometers that can track earthquakes. The dispersion radius of the first five infiltrators is 9.6-12.6 km. The dispersion radius of the second five intruders is 4.8 km within the dispersion radius of the first five. Later in the spacecraft's flight to the moon, the last two penetrators are released, one will hit the ground near the Apollo 11 landing site and the other near the Apollo 12 landing site. These are equipped with advanced seismometers that can detect earthquakes at greater depths.

The intention is to compare the findings of all intruders. With the release of all the intruders, the spacecraft enters a polar orbit and then releases a lander that is supposed to land in a crater, 56 km in diameter, located near the South Pole. The intention is to find volatile substances that can indicate the presence of water ice. A few years later, several changes were made to the work plan. First the lander will be released in preparation for landing at the South Pole and instead of 12 intruders it will have only four intruders who will detach from it afterwards.

The lander is made of two parts, a lower part that is almost completely identical to that of the Luna spacecrafts that returned soil samples to Israel such as Luna 16, and spacecrafts that landed all-terrain vehicles such as Luna 17 and Lunchod 1. In this part, the braking engines are located. The upper part is built in the form of a box and contains all the research instruments and two solar shelves. A digging arm is attached to this box to collect the soil samples. From what we see in the drawings, we get the impression that this arm is short and capable of vertical penetration only very close to the lander. The arm is neither articulated nor telescopic like the digging arms of the American spacecraft that landed on Mars. For this reason its few degrees of freedom is zero. Did the Russians not know how to develop such an arm or did they not want to? It's hard to know. It could be that such an arm requires a lot of planning time which could have delayed the schedule. The intention was to launch a sequence of five spacecraft between 2015 and 2022. In April 2013, it was announced that another delay in the launch of this spacecraft, which in the meantime received the name Luna 25. In April 2014, it was announced that it would be launched in 2016. The two spacecraft that will follow it are Luna 26 which will enter orbit around the moon and Luna 27 which will land on it. There is an intention in the future to launch a lander that will return soil samples to Israel.

Sources

1. "Russia plans mine on the moon by 2020" 25.2006

2. "Russia Klipper shuttle to be launched in 2015" 26.1.2006

3. Andrei Kislyakov – "Russia has plans for outer space in the 21st century" 20.4.2006

4. "Russia plans to launch first flight to the moon in 2011-2012″ 31.8.2006
5. Andrei Kislyakov - "Russian space program needs to change" 18.2007

6. 'Manned moon shot possible by 2020″ 6.2.2012
7. "Russia to send manned mission to moon by 2030" 30.4.2012

8. "Russia plans ambitious robotic lunar mission" 4.6.2006
9. "Russia plans lunar mission in 2012, eyes US Lunar return partnership" 8.12.2006

10 Luna Glob

11. "Lunar probe to search for water on Moon" 20.11.2011
12. "Roscosmos Revives permanent Moon base plans" 20.1.2012

13. "Russian space program to focus on landing missions" 9.4.2013

14. "Russia to launch three Lunar rovers from 2016 - 2019" 9.4.2014

Glob Luna lander

Luna 16