Fourth Generation Lunars

Roscosmos promised to unveil its lunar exploration plans by spring 2019. The last time Russian instruments landed on the Moon’s surface was way back in Soviet-tinged 1976. Russia wants to start sending parts of the Russian segment of the ISS to the Moon; these will be used to build a lunar orbital base in the following decade, where regular flights aboard new spacecraft will be made.

As the general director of Roskosmos Dmitry Rogozin reported, in 2021 a landing station Luna-25 will be sent to the Moon, in 2023 the Luna-26 orbiter will be sent, and a year later the landing station Luna-27 will be sent. Luna-25 will search for water ice at the south pole of the Earth satellite, and will also test soft landing technologies. The Luna-26 orbiter, in turn, must map and remotely study the surface of the Earth’s satellite, and the Luna-27 landing station will take soil samples at the south pole of the Moon to study. In 2027, the Luna-28 station is planned to be sent to the Moon to return cryogenic soil samples from the south pole of the Earth’s natural satellite to Earth, and Luna-29 with a moon rover in 2028.

As of February 2019 Russia planned in the years 2031-2035 to deliver to the Moon four automatic spacecraft.

1. the Luna-30 landing station will deliver a reusable lunar ship to the lunar surface to support manned missions.
2. the Luna-31 landing station will bring a heavy lunar rover weighing up to five tons and equipped with the necessary resources to develop lunar resources to the moon.
3. the Luna-32 landing station will deliver heavy modules weighing up to six tons to the Earth’s satellite for the construction of the lunar test site
4. the Luna-33 orbiter will provide communication and navigation

In mid-March 2020, Igor Mitrofanov, Head of the Department of Nuclear Planetology at the Institute of Space Research (IKI), RAS, said that a flight to the moon of the Luna-25 spacecraft was planned for October 1, 2021. After landing in the area of ??the Boguslavsky crater or the Manzini crater, he will have to study the polar exosphere of the Moon.

The heavy landing station Luna-27, which will form the basis for the deployment of Russian infrastructure on the Moon, is due to launch in August 2025. This was announced 14 April 2020 by Vladimir Kolmykov, Director General of NPO Lavochkin, which is part of Roscosmos. The specialist noted that while work on the creation of "Luna-27" is at the stage of development of design documentation. It is assumed that the spacecraft should land on the Moon, drill up to 2 meters of soil, investigate frozen samples, magnetic anomalies and seismic activity of the Earth satellite in situ, and also test the technology for safe landing of heavy vehicles.

The “Geologist-Explorer” lunar rover is a necessary stage on the way of further study and development of the Moon is the use of mobile facilities equipped with drilling rigs. Such means (lunar rovers of a new class) are in demand for the preliminary selection of the most suitable places for the construction of a lunar base, with the prospect of its further expansion as an initial element of an integrated infrastructure. The creation of a family of lunar rovers on the lunar surface precedes the usage of robotic construction tools that provide preparatory work and the beginning of the deployment of the lunar base. At the same time, the importance of this first stage, at which data on the natural conditions of the selected areas, availability of local resources, lighting conditions, communications, etc. are collected, analyzed and compared, can hardly be overestimated, since the correct choice of these areas predetermines the success of the project. The usage of lunar rovers is associated with the solution of a complex of scientific problems, among which it is necessary to highlight the regional thematic geological and geophysical survey.

The lunokhod “Robot-Geologist” belongs to the next generation of mobile devices on the lunar surface after the “Geologist-Explorer” with a wider range of scientific and practical tasks preceding the final selection of the area and the beginning of the Lunar base construction. One might think that in the scenario of the primacy of automatic means at the beginning of the exploration of the Moon, it will be necessary to launch several such lunar rovers in different regions, while in a scenario that provides for active human participation from the very first steps, their role may turn out to be significantly smaller.

The initial stage of the colonization involves the construction of a lunar base, which is preceded by research to select the most suitable areas that meet a number of criteria, with varying degrees of human participation in this process. The extensive use of robots is envisaged for the study and colonization of the Moon.