RUSSIA'S LUNAR RETURN

Russia, which pioneered and then abandoned robotic exploration of the Moon after loss of the Space Race and collapse of the Soviet Union, is starting the development of its first lunar mission in 30 years.

The ambitious flight, entering initial design, will include a lunar orbiter that, under the current plan, will also simultaneously deploy 13 probes across diverse regions of the lunar surface.

This will include two penetrators that will be fired toward the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites to acquire subsurface data to build on the manned exploration and instrumentation left at those locations 37 years ago by U.S. astronauts.

The Russian flight is also to shower 10 other higher-speed penetrators on the Moon that will form a seismic network to help solve questions about the Moon's origin.

The mother ship for the penetrators is then to drop a soft lander into a south polar crater to search for signs of water ice that would complement data from the planned 2008 U.S. Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing impactor mission to the same region (AW&ST Apr. 17, p. 26).

The new "Luna-Glob" mission is now a formal part of the Russian space plan with launch set for 2012, says Nikolay F. Moiseev, deputy director of the Russian space agency. With the new lunar flight, Russia finally joins the U.S., China, India, Japan and Europe in renewed exploration of the Moon. But the program is also subject to future budget and technical risks.

The Russian lunar mission is to follow the launch in 2009 of a Russian sample return flight to the Martian moon Phobos as part of a renewal of Russian robotic planetary exploration, Moiseev told Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Both missions have science goals related to the formation of bodies in the Solar System. The Phobos flight would help confirm theories about it being a captured asteroid, while the Luna mission would sort out competing theories of the Moon's origin.

The ambitious lunar flight would also add data to the theory that water ice, possibly useful to future lunar astronauts, may exist in permanently shadowed areas of south polar craters.