There will also be considerable interest from both space agencies for determining the abundance of the isotope Helium-3 which has been heralded as one of the most interesting potential nuclear fuel sources in the coming years and was the basis for the film, Moon.
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Richard Fisackerly, lead engineer for project Luna 27, said, “The final architecture has yet to be decided – but this combination of rotation, hammering and depth is a step beyond what we have already flown or is in development today”.
One of the aims will be to try to discover if there is enough water and raw materials to make fuel and oxygen. “Our country has to participate in this process…”
The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to join Russia’s ambitious plan to colonize the Moon, with an announcement that it will provide key tech for a planned exploration mission in 2020, and possibly help construct a permanent outpost.
Luna 27 is due to land on the edge of the South Pole Aitken basin, a south polar region where there are permanently dark sites that contain frozen water. “There are now discussions at global level going on for broad cooperation on how to go back to the Moon”, he told the BBC.
Led by the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos, in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) the project is a continuation of the 1970s exploration programme of the moon.
“The remarks echo Johann-Dietrich Wörner, the new head of the ESA, who announced just a week into his term that he plans to build a European base on the Moon’s far side”.
With the Sun only grazing the Moon’s poles at low angles, the crater rim has what is described as a near-constant “peak of eternal light”, offering plentiful solar power and relief from extremes of heat and cold.
He said: “It will be for astronomical observation, for the utilisation of minerals and other lunar resources and to create an outpost that can be visited by cosmonauts working together as a test bed for their future flight to Mars”. These are a few of the coldest places in the Solar System.
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Dr James Carpenter, Esa’s lead scientist on the project, says that by sending robotic missions to that region of the Moon, the space agencies are looking to investigate whether there is water in usable form and if so whether it can be used as a resource for the future.
