The State Corporation "Roscosmos" intends to send two spacecraft to the Moon as part of the exploration of Earth's satellite. The landing site for them will be determined by "Luna-26", its launch is in 2027.
Plans for backup spacecraft, which were already announced in December 2023, were confirmed for implementation by the head of "Roscosmos". In a behind-the-scenes conversation with a representative of the TASS news agency, he replied that there is progress on the issue of creating and launching two spacecraft instead of one.
Everything is moving as I said in December. As I said in December, those are the plans - we will launch.
"Luna-27a" and "Luna-27b" will have to avoid the disaster that happened with "Luna-25". If one spacecraft does not land, the second will perform the scientific tasks of the mission, and the work of scientists will not stop, as happened now, when there was only one spacecraft.
If the first of the twin spacecraft lands successfully, the second can be sent to the Moon's North Pole or to its far side.
"Luna-25"
In 2023, for the first time in almost fifty years, a domestic spacecraft was sent from Russia to the Moon to study Earth's satellite: "Luna-25".
The automatic station "Luna-25" crashed without landing. A special commission investigated the incident. According to its results, it became known that the accident was caused by the new domestic angular velocity measurement unit "Bius-L", which is part of the station's onboard control system.
The device was designed at the Scientific-Production Center of Automation and Instrument Engineering named after Academician N. A. Pilyugin (NPCAP) from completely Russian parts. It was responsible for determining the orientation of the station in space and its speed. Shortly before landing, the "Bius-L" accelerometer units failed due to a possible "entry into one data array of commands with different priorities for their execution by the device".
But "Luna-25" still managed to contribute to science. It took pictures from space and measured the radiation background. Also, after entering the orbit of an artificial satellite of the Moon, the station photographed the southern polar crater Zeeman on the far side of the Moon, measured the потоки gamma rays and neutrons from the surface of the Moon, and obtained parameters of the near-lunar space plasma and gas-dust exosphere in near-lunar orbit.
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