Russia's Lunar Mission Luna-25 Outpaces India's Chandrayaan-3

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Luna-25 interplanetary station came closer to the Earth's natural satellite on Wednesday afternoon than the Indian Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, launched a month earlier, a source told Sputnik.

"At 9:00 a.m. (GMT), Luna-25 closed the distance to the Moon by 50 kilometers, surpassing Chandrayaan," the source said.

The Soyuz 2.1b rocket carrying Russia's first lunar station in nearly 50 years, Luna-25, successfully blasted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome at 11:11 p.m. (GMT) on August 11.

The spacecraft will be the first station to make a soft landing in the challenging terrain of the lunar south pole, unlike its predecessors, which landed along the equatorial zone. The primary goal of the station is to conduct contact-based research on the lunar soil to determine the presence of ice.

Luna-25 will also be the first lunar station in the history of modern Russia. The last Soviet spacecraft sent to the Earth's satellite was launched in 1976 under the name Luna-24.

India's unmanned Chandrayaan-3 space station was launched on July 14 and entered lunar orbit on August 5. The station performed an approach maneuver to the Moon on August 14, lowering its orbit to 50 and 177 kilometers at perigee and apogee. Two days later, the Indian Space Research Organization announced preparations for the station's descent to the Moon, further reducing its orbit to 153 and 163 kilometers. Chandrayaan is expected to land on August 23.