“Luna” robotic missions: technology, science and a precursor
for sustainable human exploration of the Moon.
Within new knowledge from Lunar missions in XXI century (from Indian Chandrayan-2 mission trough Russian instrument LEND onboard the NASA LRO mission up till to last Chinese missions) there is an updated vision on Lunar exploration – not only science investigation and technology demonstration, but an opportunity for a sustainable presence of the humanity in cis-lunar space and on the lunar surface.
Luna-26 (orbital spacecraft) and Luna-27 (lunar lander) Russian missions are aimed to achieve new objectives in Lunar science. At the same time these SC are a “test-bed” for further lunar exploration, including national missions, international cooperation and deployment of the ILRS together with international partners.
As well as we have ISS’ broad experience and good lessons learned as applied for exploration and ongoing activities for exploration technologies verification onboard the Station, so it should extrapolate its om future lunar exploration.
Proven ISS RS programmatic mechanisms, technical background, existing capabilities and planned robotic lunar missions – will provide a synergetic effect within nearest decades to start a sustainable presence of international partnership on the Moon surface and Cis-Lunar space.
A.Sadovsky 1*, Dmitry Zarubin (2), A.Petrukovich (3), V.Tretiakov (4)
1 a.sadovski@cosmos.ru, Science Secretary, Space Research Institute (IKI) of Russian Academy of Science
2 Engineering Fellow, Space Research Institute (IKI) of Russian Academy of Science
3 Director, Space Research Institute (IKI) of Russian Academy of Sciences
4 Deputy Director, Space Research Institute (IKI) of Russian Academy of Sciences
* Speaker, corresponding author