General view of the launch pad after liftoff of a Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying the Lomonosov, Aist-2D and SamSat-218 satellites at the new Vostochny Cosmodrome outside the city of Uglegorsk, some 200 km of the city of Blagoveshchensk in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, April 28, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Kirill Kudryavtsev
Russia will evacuate a village in its Far East on August 11 as part of the launch of the first Russian lunar lander mission in nearly half a century, a local official said on Monday.
The Luna-25 lunar lander, Russia’s first since 1976, will launch from the Vostochny cosmodrome, some 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Residents of the Shakhtinskyi settlement in Russia’s Khabarovsk region, southeast of the launch site, will be evacuated early in the morning of August 11, as the village is in the planned area where the rocket boosters will fall after separation .
“The mouth of the Umalta, Ussamakh, Lepikan, Tastakh, Saganar rivers and the area of the ferry crossing on the Bureya river fall into the planned (surcharge) fall area,” said Alexei Maslov, head of the district of Verkhnebureinskyi 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 be the first lander to arrive at the moon’s south pole, Roscosmos said.
The main objective of the mission will be the development of soft landing technologies, the search for the internal structure of the Moon and the exploration of resources, including water.
The lander is expected to operate on the lunar surface for a year.
