A close race to the Moon between Russia's Luna-25 and India's Chandrayaan-3 has garnered attention worldwide.
On July 14, India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander lifted off, and on August 5, it reached lunar orbit. In preparation for a landing attempt that is anticipated to take place on August 23, it is currently reducing its orbit.
Russia is currently making its first lunar landing since the Luna-24 Soviet-era sample return mission in 1976. After taking a more direct path to the moon than previous missions, Luna-25 launched on August 10 and could try a landing as early as August 21.
The south pole will they actually reach?
Concerning the potential existence of trapped water-ice that may be utilized as fuel or to provide lunar homes with life-sustaining elements, landing at the south pole is the center of international intrigue.
India and Russia plan to touch down on the moon at 69 and 72 degrees south of the equator, respectively, which is further south than any previous lunar touchdown. Although the locations are not thought to be truly polar, we will nonetheless learn new things. It is also well known that landing close to the equator is advantageous for a variety of technical factors, such as illumination, communications, and more straightforward terrain.
"Neither is a polar location, but rather high latitude locations," Clive Neal, a lunar exploration specialist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, told Space.com. These landers will provide information from new regions on the moon because we haven't really explored such southern high latitude locations before, which is interesting from a scientific perspective.
Both missions primarily intended to test and show off technology for upcoming soft moon landings.