Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that the country will resume its lunar program, as he presented state awards to Russian cosmonauts on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space.
“We will resume the lunar program. We are talking about launching the robotic spacecraft Luna-25 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome,” the Russian leader said during the ceremony. He also emphasized the importance of successfully facing challenges in space exploration to more effectively address national development tasks here on Earth.
Putin has assured that Russia will continue to develop its space program, including the lunar program, despite Western sanctions. Among the cosmonauts honored today by Putin are Russians Sergey Prokopyev, Alexander Skvortsov, and Oleg Skripochka.
During the event, Putin also stated that Russia will continue to develop its space program despite Western sanctions. The Kremlin chief recalled that the Soviet Union also faced sanctions, but that did not prevent it from launching the first artificial satellite into space, sending the first man into space, and achieving other milestones in the cosmos. “Can’t modern Russia with its advanced technologies continue to develop the space program? Of course it can,” he emphasized.
In this regard, he assured that Russia will continue working on creating a new generation cargo spacecraft with nuclear energy sources.
Russia announced last year that it was postponing the launch of the Luna-25 spacecraft until July 2022, originally scheduled for October 2021, to allow more time for additional testing. Luna-25 will be the first spacecraft of Russia’s new program, and will aim to investigate the region of the lunar south pole. It is the successor to its Soviet predecessor Luna-24, the third spacecraft to retrieve samples from the lunar surface in August 1976.
Source: MiMub in Spanish
