"Roscosmos" Has Again Postponed A Mission To The Moon

Sanctions and failures have set Russian space programs back decades.

The launch of the Luna-26 orbital station, which is supposed to be the next stage of the Russian lunar program, has been postponed from 2027 to 2028, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Gennady Krasnikov said. He specified that the apparatus will determine suitable landing sites for future missions. Then the modules "Luna-27.1" and "Luna-27.2" will be sent to the South and North poles of the Earth's satellite. This is expected to happen in 2029 and 2030 - also a year later than the scheduled dates, The Moscow Times reports.

According to Igor Mitrofanov, head of the nuclear planetology department at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the postponement became inevitable after the crash of Luna-25 in August 2023. Then the vehicle, which was to carry out the first lunar mission in the history of modern Russia, crashed during landing, after which the head of Roscosmos promised President Vladimir Putin to try to conduct the next launch in 2026.

Mitrofanov noted that the intention to rehabilitate as soon as possible "was the first emotional reaction," but then "it became clear that many of the onboard systems of the dead vehicle could not be manufactured again, as they used imported Western components," no longer available due to sanctions. In fact, "Luna-26" had to be designed from scratch, which led to a shift in deadlines, he added.

The launch of "Luna-25" "Roscosmos" postponed at least 9 times. It was originally planned back in 2014. The project became the longest "long construction" in Russian space and was prepared for so long that, tired of waiting, the Swedes got out of it: they placed their instruments on board the Chinese lunar rover "Jade Hare", which successfully landed in 2019.

After 7 postponements, the launch of "Luna-25" was scheduled for October 2021, but did not take place. In 2022, Vladimir Putin stated that the mission would be completed in the third quarter of 2022, but after that the date was again postponed by a year.

The delayed dates affected not only the Moon. Krasnikov also reported the postponement of the mission to Venus from 2031 to 2036. Prior to that, it was planned to be realized in 2029. The mission involves the study of the surface, atmosphere, internal structure and surrounding plasma of Venus. It should continue the studies that were carried out by Soviet spacecraft in the 1960s-1990s.

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