The three-stage rocket has taken flight on three previous occasions, but today’s launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the far eastern Amur region marks an important first, as Russia seeks to modernize its space program and keep pace with the rest of the world.
Thomas Pesquet/ESA via NASA
NASA/Bill Ingalls
NASA/Steve Seipel; China National Space Administration; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University; Insider
Russia has successfully launched its Luna-25 mission to the Moon, which will attempt to land on the lunar south pole later this month. If it sticks the landing, Russia will become the first country to pull off a soft landing on the south polar region of the Moon.
Russia is getting ready to launch its first mission to the Moon in nearly fifty years in an attempt to stay relevant amidst a renewed space race.
British satellite company OneWeb is counting its losses, and not its satellites. Following a fallout with the Russian space agency that led to 36 of its satellites being held captive in Kazakhstan, a company official said that they have “moved on.”
It’s been 30 years since a NASA spacecraft went to Venus, a yellowish planet 67 million miles from the Sun and 141 million miles from us. Venus is often thought of as a sibling planet to Earth, both being rocky worlds close enough to the Sun to bask in its heat. And yet, at some point in their histories, the two…
Space exploration takes tons of planning, technological expertise, and daring. And given the long timescales involved, they often require considerable patience. Many upcoming missions to deep space aren’t happening any time soon, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be excited.
