It's been nearly 50 years since the Soviet Union launched a spacecraft to the Moon’s surface. In 1976, the Luna 24 lander, an unmanned spacecraft, returned 6.2 ounces of Lunar samples to Earth.  This was four years after the United State had launched its sixth and final Apollo manned mission to the surface of the Moon.

In December of 2017, President Donald Trump outlined his administration's vision for the Artemis program, to build out the Lunar platform for launching American astronauts back to the Moon again after nearly 45 years, to develop the Lunar resources for long term presence and use. The Artemis program called for mining water ice and other resources on the moon for  astronaut basecamps, oxygen, and fuel. Helium-3. which could be the critical element in producing unbounded fusion energy on earth and to fuel rapid exploration of space is abundant here. Amidst the oligarchy’s drive to reinstate feudalism, the new space race ignited by Presidents Trump and Putin, and Prime Minister Modi of India speaks to the resistance and unbounded optimism of the human spirit which will finally defeat their satanic and bestial scheme. 

It has been noted many times that past Lunar orbiting and landing missions have discovered the presence of water on the Moon. The Moon's south pole has been eyed by many nations as a perfect landing spot for finding abundant resources, like Helium-3, on the moon, and  in the Moon's permanently shadowed craters.

Russia is on the way to achieving a major scientific milestone, despite the ongoing military conflict with Ukraine and international sanctions. If all goes well, Russia will be landing its Luna 25 lander at the south pole of the Moon in just a few days. After  Russia's Luna-25  successful launch on August 10 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz-2 rocket, it was announced today (August 16th) that Luna 25 has reached Lunar orbit. According to the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, the spacecraft appeared to be in good shape.

This is very exciting news, not just for Russia, but for all of humanity. In case you hadn’t realized it, Russia's Luna 25 might be the welcoming party for India's Chandrayaan 3 Lunar south pole mission. India launched its Chandrayaan 3 mission carrying an orbiter, lander, and rover on July 14th. The spacecraft entered Lunar orbit on August 7. India's Lunar lander is scheduled to touch down at the Lunar south pole around August 23, approximately 2 days after Russia's Lunar landing.

The plan for Russia's Lander is to analyze the Lunar soil, search for water ice, and conduct experiments about the Moon's atmosphere. Russia will be landing at the Boguslawski crater with a 30 kg payload carrying several instruments, which include an active neutron and gamma ray device to analyze the regolith, an instrument that will measure plasma in the exosphere, a laser mass spectrometer, and an instrument that will measure dust and micro-meteorites. 

India's Chandrayaan Instruments include a surface thermophysical experiment that will measure the thermal conductivity and temperature of the Lunar surface, an instrument that will measure seismic activity around the landing site, and a Langmuir probe which will measure plasma densities. These instruments are located on the Lunar lander. The rover will include an alpha particle  X-ray  spectrometer that will test the chemical composition and mineralogical composition of the Lunar surface, and an instrument that will determine the elemental composition of Lunar regolith and rocks around the landing site.  

These groundbreaking Lunar south pole missions are taking place just months following the launch of Artemis 1 from the United States on November 16th on a 25.5 day unmanned  mission around the moon, which followed several delays due to a hydrogen leak and hurricanes. See this author's article titled  "Artemis 1: First Step Toward A New Era of Giant Leaps In Space Exploration and Discoveries" for more details on this mission. 

President Trump's Artemis program target date for the first Lunar landing mission in 2024 was delayed after the insertion of the avatar Joe Biden into the  White House. The mission was initially delayed to 2025, and now according to recent reports from NASA, the Artemis 3 human landing mission may not take place until sometime in 2026, due to concern that SpaceX's Starship super heavy rocket and the Human Landing System will not be ready in time.

Under NASA’s Artemis program companies like Astrobotics and Intuitive Machines  were selected as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Service Initiative (CLIPS) program. Intuitive Machines announced recently that it is scheduled to fly a private moon landing mission on a SpaceX falcon 9 as soon as November 15. Intuitive machines will deliver NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1(PRIME-1) drill  to the lunar South Pole.

We're on the way to building civilization on the moon and creating new space frontiers, with lots of  input from the many individuals, companies, and nations taking part. Cooperatively making space great again is the path to unceasing discovery of the nature of the universe and the most critical element to creating peace, through development, on this Earth.