The plans for manned flights of Russian cosmonauts to the Moon, as well as missions to Mars, were discussed at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which took place on Cosmonautics Day, April 12.
It was also reported at the meeting that a transport and energy complex with a nuclear power plant, which has been developed in the Russian Federation since 2010, will be created for flights into deep space.
“The designs of this transport and energy module are already real. I believe that this will be a breakthrough, “said the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, whose performance was shown on the TV channel Russia 1, aired on April 18.
The report also specifies that this year Russia will send the first mission to the moon in its modern history. This will be the Luna-25 lander, the launch of which is scheduled for October 1 from the Vostochny cosmodrome by the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat upper stage.
The lander is to become the first man-made object at the south pole of the moon. After that, it is planned to launch the Luna-26 orbiter (2024) and the Luna-27 landing vehicle (2025) to the Earth satellite.
Also in 2022, the Russian Federation, together with Europe, are planning to send a second common mission to Mars. It was originally supposed to fly in 2018, but was postponed for two years of launch due to the technical unavailability of the mission. In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic interfered with the flight.
On April 15, it was reported that Russia would begin the development of water supply systems for the lunar base and the interplanetary space station. According to the decision of the Scientific Council, in the period from 2022 to 2025, the Scientific Research and Design Institute of Chemical Engineering plans to create water supply systems for promising objects of the lunar program – an orbital station, a landing complex and a lunar base, as well as an interplanetary space station. The work should end with the creation of equipment layouts.
At the end of April, at an expanded scientific and technical council with the involvement of customers from the rocket and space industry and co-executors from other scientific institutes, a final decision on these issues will be made.