Station “Luna-25” took the first picture of the surface of the Earth’s satellite

The automatic station “Luna-25” took the first picture of the lunar surface, which depicts the Zeeman crater on the back side of the Earth’s satellite. About it reported in the press service of Roskosmos.

“The automatic station, flying in a circular orbit of an artificial satellite of the Moon, took pictures of the lunar surface with television cameras of the STS-L complex. Pictured is the south polar crater Zeeman on the far side of the moon. The coordinates of the center of the crater correspond to 75 degrees south latitude and 135 degrees west longitude.

Roscosmos noted the uniqueness of the crater. “The Zeeman crater, invisible from the Earth, is a unique object on the lunar surface and is of great interest to researchers — the height of the surrounding shaft reaches 8 kilometers above the surface of a relatively flat bottom,” the state corporation explained, noting that the resulting image “significantly complements the currently available information about this crater.

In addition to the image obtained, the Luna-25 station also measured the fluxes of gamma rays and neutrons from the lunar surface and obtained the parameters of the circumlunar space plasma and gas and dust exosphere in the circumlunar orbit.

Luna-25 was launched on the night of August 11 from the Vostochny cosmodrome. At 03:30 Moscow time, Roskosmos reported that the automatic station was put on a flight path to the Moon and separated from the Fregat upper stage. The first flight path correction was made on 12 August and the second on 14 August. August 16 “Luna-25” came out into the orbit of an artificial lunar satellite. It is expected that landing in the area north of the Boguslavsky crater will occur on August 21.

“Luna-25” will be the first lunar mission in the history of modern Russia, in which the station will make a soft landing in the region of the South Pole of the Moon. There she will collect lunar soil and deliver it to Earth. The project also plans to launch an automatic probe, the orbital part of which will make it possible to conduct remote research and select suitable sites for subsequent descent vehicles. The previous apparatus, Luna-24, was launched in 1976. The first images of the side of the Moon invisible from the Earth were obtained in 1959, they were made by the Luna-3 station.