Russia Expects To Land Capsule With Lunar Soil Samples In Volgograd Or Zhezkazgan

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th October, 2019) A capsule with lunar soil samples that will be collected as part of Russia's Luna-28 lunar mission is expected to land either near Russia's Volgograd or in Kazakhstan, possible return trajectories show.

Earlier this year, Director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian academy of Sciences Lev Zelenyi told Sputnik that the delivery of frozen samples of lunar soil to Earth on board the Luna-28 automatic interplanetary spacecraft (Luna-Grunt rover) is scheduled for around 2027.

The spacecraft's planned return trajectories, analyzed in Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin's Vestnik Journal, show that the capsule will likely end up either at Kapustin Yar rocket launch site, located between Volgograd and Astrakhan, or at a training ground near Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.

Earlier this month, a leading scientist at Russia's Space Research Institute announced that Russia could also launch a mini-rover to the Moon as part of the Luna-28 mission.

In August, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) told Sputnik that it was considering the option of participating in the Luna-28 mission.