The launch of the Luna-26 station is scheduled for 2024
MOSCOW, February 13. /tass/. The Russian automatic interplanetary station Luna-26 will allow monitoring the activities of foreign state and private spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This was reported on Sunday in the state corporation "Roscosmos".
"The exploration and determination of the properties of lunar resources, as well as the assessment and control of activities on the Moon of foreign public and private spacecraft will be important tasks for the long-term Russian program of exploration and development of the "neighbor" of the Earth," the message says, dedicated to the description of the work plans of the automatic interplanetary station "Luna-26", the launch of which is scheduled for 2024.
According to the state Corporation, the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering (TsNIIMash, part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) is developing an experiment to detect inconspicuous objects. According to the plan, the spacecraft, which will go to the Earth's natural satellite after Luna-26, will determine the properties of objects with low reflectivity and dimensions of the order of a few centimeters with the help of infrared optical-electronic equipment from a circumlunar orbit with a height of 50 to 100 kilometers.
"Remote determination of temperature, degree of blackness and size of objects will allow us to draw preliminary conclusions about their mineralogical composition, density and mass," Roscosmos reported.
As noted in the state corporation, the tasks of the Luna-26 station will also be mapping the mineralogical composition and distribution of water ice on the surface of the Earth satellite from the lunar polar orbit.
