Russia launches lunar lander in race to find water on moon

Russia launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47
years on Thursday in a bid to be the first power to make a soft
landing on the lunar south pole, a region believed to hold
coveted pockets of water ice.

A Soyuz 2.1v rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft blasted
off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east
of Moscow, on Friday at 0211 Moscow time. The lander is due to
touch down on the moon on Aug. 23, Russia's space agency said.

The Russian lunar mission, the first since 1976, is
racing against India, which sent up its Chandrayaan-3 lunar
lander last month, and more broadly with the United States and
China, which both have advanced lunar exploration programmes.

For centuries, astronomers have wondered about water on the
moon, which is 100 times drier than the Sahara. NASA maps in
2018 showed water ice in the shadowed parts of the moon, and in
2020 NASA confirmed water exists on the sunlight areas.
(Reporting Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Joey Roulette in
Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)