Russia will evacuate a village in its far east on 11th August as part of the launch of Russia’s first lunar lander mission in nearly half a century, a local official said on Monday.
General view of the launch pad after a Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying Lomonosov, Aist-2D and SamSat-218 satellites took off at the new Vostochny cosmodrome outside the city of Uglegorsk, about 200 kilometres from the city of Blagoveshchensk in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, on 28th April, 2016. PICTURE: Reuters/Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool/File photo
The Luna-25 lunar lander, Russia’s first since 1976, will be launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, some 5,550 kilometres east of Moscow, according to Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.
The residents of the Shakhtinskyi settlement in Russia’s Khabarovsk region, south-east of the launch site, will be evacuated early morning on 11th August, as the village lies in the predicted area where the rocket boosters will fall after they separate.
“The mouth of the Umalta, Ussamakh, Lepikan, Tastakh, Saganar rivers and the area of the ferry crossing on the Bureya River fall into the predicted [booster] fall zone,” Alexei Maslov, head of the Verkhnebureinskyi district in the Khabarovsk region, said on the Telegram messaging app. “The residents of Shakhtinskyi will be evacuated.”
Luna-25 will launch on a Soyuz-2 Fregat booster and will be the first lander to arrive on the South Pole of the moon, Roscosmos has said.
The main objective of the mission will be the development of soft-landing technologies, research of the internal structure of the Moon and exploration for resources, including water.
The lander is expected to operate on the lunar surface for one year.
