Russian authorities will evacuate a settlement in the country's Far East later this week as Moscow prepares for its first moon landing in almost 50 years, a local official has said.
Residents of the village of Shakhtinsky, in Russia's Khabarovsk region, will leave their homes on August 11 at around 7.30 a.m. Moscow time to avoid fallout from the rocket launch, Alexei Maslov, head of the Verkhnebureinskyi district of the region, said in a post to Telegram on Monday.
Russia is expected to fire its Luna-25 lunar lander mission in the early hours of Friday morning local time from Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome.
"This is the first lunar program to take place in the 21st century," Maslov said. The Luna-25 is described by Russian state news agency, Tass, as "the first domestically-made probe in modern Russia's history."
The Luna-25 will "conduct long-term scientific research," including analyzing soil samples on the south pole of the Moon, Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said on Monday. It will land and explore the area of the Moon close to the Boguslavsky crater, Tass reported.
The probe will remain on the surface of the Moon for around one year, according to Russian reports.
It will use a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket to reach Earth orbit, before entering lunar transfer orbit, followed by lunar orbit and ultimately reaching the surface of the moon, according to NASA. The initial flight stage will last around four and a half days, state news outlet RIA Novosti reported.
The village of Shakhtinsky is within the area Russian officials believe the rocket boosters will fall during the launch, Maslov said.
"Fallen fragments can cause injury to people in the immediate vicinity of the place of their fall," Maslov said on August 2. The falling rocket boosters will sound like "thunder," he added.
In late May, Roscosmos announced the launch would be set for August, delayed from the previously-planned date of July 13, 2023. Russia had "tentatively" planned to launch the probe in 2022, according to Tass.
Luna-25's predecessor, Luna-24, was launched by Soviet authorities in August 1976. Luna-24 brought 170 grams of lunar soil back to Earth, Tass reported.
Future missions of the Luna-26 and Luna-27 are forecast for 2027 and 2028, RIA Novosti reported. The Luna-27 mission will include a lunar soil drilling rig, according to the outlet.
Luna-26 will be sent up into the Moon's orbit for "remote scientific measurements and as a possible communications relay for the next lander mission," according to the European Space Agency. Luna-27 will be larger than the Luna-25 lander, the agency said.
The organization stopped cooperation with Russia on the lunar program after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
