A prototype of the navigation system for the new Oryol spacecraft designed for manned moon flights has been developed in Russia. This was announced by the director of the Russian Institute for Space Research, Anatoli Petrukowitsch, at a meeting of the Council for Space Travel of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“This device will work thanks to star navigation and a moon map, which will enable it to be located very precisely on autonomous flights,” said Petrukowitsch.
A three-dimensional moon map is to create the Russian Luna-25 spacecraft beforehand, which is due to be launched in 2024. Its predecessor Luna-25, the first spacecraft of this type from Russian production after a 45-year hiatus, is due to launch on the moon in October 2021.
According to earlier reports, Russia is also expected to send a manned lunar base, Luna-27, to the Earth satellite as part of the Federal Space Program, which will run until 2025. In addition, it is planned to launch a heavy lunar base Luna-28 for taking basic samples and transporting them to earth and a lunar base Luna-29 for transporting a heavy lunar vehicle between 2027 and 2028.
The Oryol spaceship, which is currently being worked on by the “Energija” space rocket corporation, is to be placed in orbit close to Earth in 2023. According to the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Dmitri Rogosin, the landing of Russian cosmonauts on the moon is planned for 2030.