On Friday, Russia launches the first spacecraft to the moon since 1976.

On Friday, Russia will launch the first spacecraft to the moon since 1976, the Russian space agency Roskosmos announced today, which has been trying to run its own projects for decades.

The Luna-25 spacecraft will be launched on August 11 at two o'clock Moscow time, Roscosmos said in a statement, at a time when world powers such as the US and China have more missions to the moon.

Roscosmos stated that the Soyuz rocket was assembled at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Far East for the launch of Luna-25, which is to land near the south pole of the Moon, in "difficult terrain".

The flight should last between four and a half and five and a half days, according to data published by Roskosmos and reported by the TASS news agency.

When it lands on the moon, Luna-25, weighing 800 kilograms, will be tasked with taking soil samples and analyzing it for at least a year and conducting long-term scientific research, the Russian space agency said.

It will be the first mission of Russia's new lunar program, which comes as Moscow looks to strengthen its space cooperation with Beijing amid tensions with Western space powers over the war in Ukraine.

After the start of the Russian offensive against Ukraine, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it will no longer cooperate with Russia in the launch of Luna-25, nor on future missions on the 26th and 27th.

Although the European agency has withdrawn, Moscow has announced that it will continue its projects related to the Moon and replace the ESA equipment with Russian-made scientific equipment.

The last mission to the moon was carried out during the time of the Soviet Union, and it was the space probe Luna 24, in 1976.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has been trying to introduce innovations in the field of space research, and its competitors are not only states, but also private companies such as "SpaceX" of the American billionaire Elon Musk.