Russia's Luna-25 mission to capture lunar
landing for terrain study, structural analysis

The Luna-25 lunar lander mission, set to be launched Friday, will film its landing on the moon so as to enable scientists to model the terrain and study lunar structure through regolith movement, Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK) said on Wednesday.

"During the Luna-25 mission, we plan to record the entire landing process with panoramic cameras, which will enable us to create a model of the terrain of the landing site. We also hope to get footage at the moment of Luna-25's landing, which will show how the lunar regolith and dust behave during landing," MIIGAiK said.

The footage will allow geophysicists and geologists to study in detail the properties of regolith, soil strength and other key features of the lunar structure. The acquired data will help facilitate more precise landing for future stations and better plan their experimental payload, it added.

Luna-25 mission, the first Russian spacecraft in more than four decades, will head to the moon on Friday at 02:11 Moscow time (2311 GMT Thursday) on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Vostochny Cosmodrome, a Russian spaceport located in the Amur Oblast in Russia's Far East, according to local media reports.