Russia - 4t Generastion Lunas

Discussion of the integrated concept of the general program of the Moon research took place on November 28, 2018. Then the terms of the program of mastering a celestial body, which is calculated until 2040, were designated. It involves the creation of a super-heavy launch vehicle by 2028. Russia is also going to deploy a habitable base and build an observatory. This proposal was addressed to the Roskosmos state corporation and the Russian Academy of Sciences by the Lavochkin NPO.

Roscosmos promised to unveil its lunar exploration plans by spring 2019. The last time Russian instruments landed on the Moon’s surface was way back in Soviet-tinged 1976. Russia wants to start sending parts of the Russian segment of the ISS to the Moon; these will be used to build a lunar orbital base in the following decade, where regular flights aboard new spacecraft will be made.

As the general director of Roskosmos Dmitry Rogozin reported, in 2021 a landing station Luna-25 will be sent to the Moon, in 2023 the Luna-26 orbiter will be sent, and a year later the landing station Luna-27 will be sent. Luna-25 will search for water ice at the south pole of the Earth satellite, and will also test soft landing technologies. The Luna-26 orbiter, in turn, must map and remotely study the surface of the Earth’s satellite, and the Luna-27 landing station will take soil samples at the south pole of the Moon to study. In 2027, the Luna-28 station is planned to be sent to the Moon to return cryogenic soil samples from the south pole of the Earth’s natural satellite to Earth, and Luna-29 with a moon rover in 2028.

As of February 2019 Russia planned in the years 2031-2035 to deliver to the Moon four automatic spacecraft.

1. Luna-30 landing station will deliver a reusable lunar ship to the lunar surface to support manned missions.
2. Luna-31 landing station will bring a heavy lunar rover weighing up to five tons and equipped with the necessary resources to develop lunar resources to the moon.
3. Luna-32 landing station will deliver heavy modules weighing up to six tons to the Earth’s satellite for the construction of the lunar test site
4. Luna-33 orbiter will provide communication and navigation

The scientific director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI) Lev Zeleny noted 08 October 2019 that the current federal space program (2016-2025) includes three lunar missions - two landing and one orbital. The first of these, Luna 25, is due to be launched in 2021. “Unfortunately, for various financial and organizational reasons, the following devices - Luna-26 and Luna-27 - are shifting closer to the end of the planned period, that is, the launch dates for Luna-26 are 2023-2024 and Luna- 27" - 2024-2025, although we are still trying to shift Luna-27 to 2023-2024. These missions have shifted because Luna-25 has shifted from 2019 to 2021," said the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Russian robotic Moon exploration program currently consists of three successive missions, using the legacy of earlier Soviet lunar missions, which included orbiters and landers, sample returns and rovers. The last in the row of Soviet missions was Luna 24 (“Luna” is Russian for “Moon”) sample return mission in 1976.

In the 21st century, the polar regions of the Moon have become the most interesting for research. The first landers of the 1950-1970s, automatic and manned, created within the framework of the Soviet and American space programs, landed and explored the Moon near the equator and in temperate latitudes. However, as shown by remote lunar studies carried out at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries, the conditions near the lunar poles differ significantly from the conditions in the regions studied earlier. The main difference is that the polar regolith (top layer of soil) has a high content of volatile compounds, the main of which is water.

The data that were obtained at the beginning of the century, including from the Russian LEND neutron telescope (created at the IKI RAS and installed on the American orbiter Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ), showed that there are many volatile compounds of cosmic origin in the polar regolith, starting from water and ending with complex molecules. These conjunctions were brought to the Moon by comets. The pole on the Moon can be compared to a natural refrigerator, where in the cold traps of the polar regolith for hundreds of millions of years, layers of hoarfrost of all cosmic volatile substances that have ever fallen on the Earth's satellite have been accumulated and preserved.

This is an extremely interesting place for research, since it is here that traces of earlier periods in the development of the solar system can be stored. In addition, the polar regions are beginning to be of interest for the creation of a permanent lunar station, including a manned one. The presence of frozen water in the regolith will free future astronauts from the need to bring this valuable resource from Earth. It will also be needed for the extraction of oxygen, and in a more distant future, hydrogen fuel.

However, lunar conditions can be dangerous for humans. Future astronauts are threatened not only by the absence of an atmosphere and low gravity, but also by cosmic radiation, as well as lunar dust, whose properties are strikingly different from those of terrestrial dust.

New missions, unlike their predecessors, are targeted at lunar poles, which were poorly explored during early lunar programs in 1960's and 1970's. However, recent discoveries made by NASA's Clementine, Lunar Prospector, and most recent Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter gave strong evidence in support of various lunar volatiles, and above all, water ice, in lunar regolith near poles. Roscosmos has contributed important scientific results in these studies with Russian-contributed neutron telescope LEND onboard the LRO spacecraft. This may indicate more diverse and dynamic environment on the Moon, than assumed. Moreover, such volatiles may be used later as possible sources for lunar base. Currently approved Russian Moon missions are as follows:

• Luna-25 (also known as Luna-Glob-Lander) mission to land the spacecraft on the Moon and the first in a row of a new lunar program, which should eventually lead to exploitation of the Moon. The spacecraft should land in the vicinity of lunar South pole and analyse lunar regolith samples in-situ.
• Luna-26 (or Luna-Resurs-Orbiter) orbital mission to study Moon from low polar orbit (approximately 50–100 km).
• Luna-27 landing mission (or Luna-Resurs-Lander), which shall study lunar regolith in-situ. ESA is considering the possibility to install a drill and a sampling device on the spacecraft.

All these mission were included in the Federal Space program of Russia for 2016–2025. Also, the joint efforts are now in progress with colleagues of the European Space Agency to establish the commonly beneficial cooperation in Moon exploration, which should include both the contribution of ESA elements and service for Luna 25–27 missions and the joint implementation of the LPSR/Luna-Grunt project.

The next step after the first three missions is to make the Lunar Polar Sample Return mission (LPSR, or Luna-Grunt) to study polar samples in Earth's laboratories. Several technological issues are to be solved, such as cryogenic delivery of the Moon's permafrost from the poles.