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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/russia-heads-back-to-the-moon-with-luna-25/ [arstechnica.com]

Russia's space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country's first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976.

The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia's Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket propelled Luna 25 through an overcast cloud deck and into the stratosphere, then shed its four first-stage boosters about two minutes into the flight. A core stage engine fired a few minutes longer, and the Soyuz rocket jettisoned its payload shroud.
[...]
Russia would like the Luna 25 mission to rekindle the country's once-stellar record [arstechnica.com] in the realm of interplanetary exploration. Luna 24, the Soviet-era mission that was Russia's last probe to land on the Moon, returned lunar soil samples to Earth on a robotic spacecraft in August 1976, nearly four years after NASA's last Apollo landing with astronauts. That feat was not repeated until China's Chang'e 5 sample return mission [arstechnica.com] scooped up lunar soil and brought it back to Earth in 2020.
[...]
An agreement between Russia and China on robotic [arstechnica.com] and eventual human lunar exploration in 2021 was seen by many as an initiative to potentially rival the US-led Artemis program. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Vostochny Cosmodrome, where Luna 25 launched on Thursday, and vowed to "resume the lunar program" abandoned by the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
[...]
A report released by the Center for Strategic & International Studies [amazonaws.com] last December found that the Russia-China partnership in space "may well be exaggerated," citing declining Russian space budgets, the drain on Russia's space program caused by the war in Ukraine, and persisting mistrust between the two countries.
[...]
The Moon is getting to be a busy place [arstechnica.com]. China has landers operating on the near and far side of the Moon, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been observing there for 14 years. In April, a Japanese commercial spacecraft narrowly missed [arstechnica.com] making a successful landing.

Now Luna 25 is on the way and is scheduled to land on the Moon just two days before India's Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft [arstechnica.com] is due to make its descent on August 23.

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