Russia is taking a big gamble as it prepares to launch its first spacecraft to the Moon since 1976 on Friday. After decades of failed space missions, and with the war in Ukraine making it a pariah on the international stage, Russia is hoping to re-emerge as a major player in space exploration and consolidate its alliance with China.
On April 12, 1961, Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin made the first manned flight into space, putting the USSR in the lead in the space race. With this feat, the Soviet Union established its dominance over the United States in space. Six decades later, Russia is once again hoping to make its mark by launching the Luna-25 moon lander on Friday.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos said that a Soyuz launcher had been assembled at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far east for the launch of Luna-25, which is due to land near the Moon's South Pole on "difficult terrain". The flight is expected to last between "four and a half and five and a half days".
Its mission is to "take and analyse soil samples and conduct long-term scientific research", according to the Russian space agency's press release. "Luna-25 is part of a programme designed to prepare for lunar landings," says Xavier Pasco, an expert on space policy issues and director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French non-profit focused on international security issues.
"The Russians want to use this programme to show that they are in the race, despite the situation in Ukraine, where they seem to be bogged down."
A series of setbacks
Russia is taking a big gamble with the Luna-25, the first time it has launched a spacecraft to the Moon since 1976, when the Soviet Union was still in its heyday. Beset by debt and corruption, Roscosmos is struggling to bring its projects to fruition. Its latest public failure came last February, when a Soyuz spacecraft leaked coolant.
Developed in 1997 after the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Luna-25 has faced a number of setbacks since it was initially scheduled to be launched in the 2010s. "I've lost count of the number of Luna-25 launches planned," says René Pischer, the European Space Agency's (ESA) representative to Russia.
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The Russian space project has also had to contend with complications from current events. Initially involved in the launches of Luna-25, Luna-26 and above all the Luna-27 – an ambitious mission to investigate the potential use of lunar resources – the ESA put an end to all collaboration with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
"On Luna-27, we provided two things: assistance with drilling and navigation tools to help achieve the most precise landing possible," says Pischer. The split has also dealt a terrible blow to ExoMars, an ambitious European programme established to explore the Red Planet.
Today, there is little collaboration between Russia and Europe. "The level of activity in Russia is much lower," says Pischer. "The only things that remain are collaboration on the International Space Station (ISS) and the withdrawal of equipment for the ExoMars mission. It's a sad state of affairs."
A jewel of the Soviet legacy
The Luna-25 mission may have less chance of succeeding without help from Europe. "Up to now, the Russian space sector has survived thanks to international cooperation," says Isabelle Sourbès-Verger, a specialist in the comparative analysis of national space policies at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. "The Russian agency has gotten used to using components of US or European origin. It needs to regain this expertise. Therefore, it’s going to be interesting to see the results of this launch: it's a difficult and complicated mission to the Moon’s South Pole and it's been a long time since Russia has succeeded in an exploratory space mission."
If successful, Russia would be symbolically reconnecting with a gilded past, as Luna-25 was named after a series of successful Soviet missions. "[Russian President] Vladimir Putin has never been passionate about space, but it's one of the jewels of the Soviet legacy," says Sourbès-Verger. "It’s one of his points of pride, along with nuclear power."
During a visit to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in April 2022, Putin reminded everyone present that the USSR had managed to successfully send Gagarin into space in 1961 despite the "total" sanctions imposed against it.
Russia is counting on its ally China to help it regain its place at the centre of the space race. Now a major player in space exploration, Beijing is planning to set up a permanent station on the Moon’s surface with Moscow.
This alliance was forged after the fall of the Soviet Union and has become stronger since 2019 as a direct response to US dominance. The US continues to allocate the most resources to space exploration of any other country, and the involvement of private players – such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin – has ramped up the race to the stars.
"The big thing in space is returning to the Moon," says Pasco. "By focusing on this, Russia is sending a geopolitical message. For the moment, this is a scientific and peaceful issue, but this type of major programme, which will keep us busy for the next 30 years, will no doubt end up becoming more political."
As such, it is difficult to see where international collaboration fits in. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, space has remained one of the few areas of cooperation between geopolitical rivals, with the US, Russia and Europe all working together on the ISS since 1998. This will soon come to an end, as Russia has already announced that it will be withdrawing from the ISS after 2024. But does this mean the end of an era of space cooperation?
Not necessarily, says Sourbès-Verger. "We had the space race until 1970, then a period of cooperation, with the demise of the USSR and the recovery of Russian resources. That will come to an end in 2025 or 2030, and several national programmes will develop independently. But that doesn't mean the end of all cooperation," she says.
Manned space flights, which are costly missions with complex logistics, can only be accomplished when working with other countries, she says, particularly missions to Mars. "We need to maintain this earthly cooperation in the face of such a difficult challenge."
This article has been translated from the original in French.
