Russia delays lunar missions as US marks historic flight

Russia has pushed back the launch of three moon missions, the Interfax news agency said ​on Tuesday, a setback to its ambitious ‌lunar exploration programme as longtime space rival, the United States, celebrated an historic flight around the moon.

The launches of Russian spacecraft ​Luna-28, Luna-29, and Luna-30 have been postponed ​to 2032–2036, Interfax quoted Russian Academy of Sciences ⁠Vice President Sergei Chernyshev as saying.

It did not ​say when they had originally been slated to lift ​off, but the unexplained delays follow postponements last year to other Russian lunar and space missions and the crash of its unmanned ​Luna-25 craft into the surface of the moon ​in 2023.

Russia sees lunar exploration as vital to its national ‌interests, ⁠the head of Russia’s space agency Roskosmos said after the failed 2023 mission, saying the race was on to develop the moon’s natural resources.

The Soviet Union launched ​the world’s first ​satellite and ⁠sent the first human into space in the 1960s, but Russia’s once mighty ​space programme has declined in the post-Soviet ​era, ⁠falling behind the U.S. and, increasingly, China.

This week, four astronauts from NASA’s Artemis II mission were the first ⁠to ​fly around the moon in ​over 50 years, travelling further into space than any humans before them.