It’s almost 50 years since Russia’s ‘last moon digger’

A model of Luna 24, which excavated the Moon and brought samples back to Earth in 1976

In 1976, a robotic Russian spacecraft landed in the dry sea bed of the Moon’s Mare Crisium and busied itself drilling down into the surface.

Luna 24 touched down on August 18, 1976, and stayed on the Moon for just a day before blasting back to Earth.

It brought back precious samples from our only natural satellite, expanding our understanding of our solar system and the universe itself.

This was the third Soviet mission to bring back Moon samples, and in total, the American Apollo missions and Soviet Luna landers brought back near 400kg of lunar material to be studied.

But although there had been such missions before 1976, there was not another one for almost five decades, giving Luna 24 the lonely moniker of the ‘last moon digger’.

It took almost 45 years before it lost the title, when Chang’e 5 become China’s first moon digger in 2020.

So what led to the lunar lull?

Interest in space exploration spread to other areas, rather than being abandoned – though budgets did decrease, and some questioned the value of such huge costs involved when there were immediate problems on Earth.

Russia launched the world’s first space station in 1971, and went on to also launch Mir, the world’s first modular space station assembled in space in 1986.

It remained in service as a research lab until 2001, including ten-year uninterrupted inhabited stretch.

Russia had been planning to launch a second Mir space station, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 decided instead to work with the USA on what would become the International Space Station (ISS).

The Moon in general has not been a huge focus of study until interest picked up again after the Millennium. No humans have landed there since 1972, though Nasa plans to change this soon and ‘land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon’ with the Artemis missions.

What has Russia done since Luna 24?

The Luna programme was resurrected by the country’s space agency Roscosmos with a plan to land another spacecraft on the Moon last year.

It was hoped that the rover would become the first to reach the southern polar region, and examine if there was water ice there.

The robotic craft entered lunar orbit in August, but vanished from radars and crashed onto the Moon’s surface, where it ‘ceased to exist’.

Luna 24’s lading craft (Picture: Nasa)

Mikhail Marov, 90, whom local media described as a key consultant in the expedition, suffered a ‘sharp deterioration’ when he learned the mission failed.

Marov added: ‘It’s sad that we didn’t manage to land the device.

‘For me, this was perhaps the last hope to see the revival of our lunar programme.

‘I hope that we can manage, that the leadership of Roscosmos will have a desire, even a conscious need to repeat this experiment.’

Will there be more Moon diggers?

Yes, there are more plans for lunar landings including gathering samples.

Nasa described the Moon as a 4.5-billion-year-old time capsule, pristinely preserved in the vacuum of space.

It plans to send another crewed mission there and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon.

Russia has also said it plans to revist to the Moon, landing its cosmonauts on the surface for the first time.

It was the first country to successfully land an unmanned spacecraft there, but has never yet landed a cosmonaut.

Speaking after the failed Luna 25 mission, Russian President Vladimir Putin said ‘the work will be continued’.

He was quoted by state-run TASS news agency as saying space travel ‘is always associated with the unknown. So there is nothing very unusual here, although we would like everything to have succeeded this time. But we will continue this work. We will even double down in some areas.’

Moon missions are prohibitively expensive, however, and the country has been waging a large scale war against Ukraine since invading over two years ago.

The glory days of Russia’s space programme may be quiet for now, but ‘moon digging’ is back on the agenda.

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