Russia to launch new Moon probe in 2015

The new Moon orbiter, called Luna-Glob will lift off from the Vostochny space port in Russia's Far East after several test launches, Federal Space Agency Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said.

Luna-Glob is the first of four missions planned before the creation of a fully robotic lunar base scheduled for after 2015, 'Ria Novosti' reported.

The orbiter will have a payload of 120 kilogrammes, including equipment for astrophysics experiments, dust monitors, and plasma sensors to study ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

The Moon exploration project is part of the Federal Space Programme dating back to the late 1990s. It was put on hold due to financial restrictions and resurrected several years later. Earlier, the mission was postponed twice.

Roscosmos had announced a USD 300,000 tender to develop a blueprint of a heavy rocket carrier that would be capable of carrying manned spacecraft to the Moon.

Popovkin previously said the country's planned manned spacecraft capable of flights to the Moon will not fly until 2018, the report said.

Russia's space programme suffered a slew of setbacks in recent years, most of them blamed on faulty hardware. The most recent mishap took place last December, when a botched launch of the Yamal-402 telecoms satellite led to the depletion of its fuel supply, shortening its orbit lifetime.

Russia launched the Phobos-Grunt probe in November 2011, its most ambitious planetary mission in decades, designed to bring back rock and soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos.