The Russian space agency Roskosmos announced last week that the mission, which was originally scheduled to start on October 1, was postponed to May next year.
The Luna-25 mission to the south pole of the moon is intended for ice sampling. This would be Russia’s first mission to the moon in 45 years and the first in the post-Soviet era.
Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin said more time is needed to complete the successful tests and hopes to do so by May next year.
In March of this year, Roskosmos announced that Russia and China have agreed to build a joint lunar space station. The space station will be designed as a “complex of experimental research objects on the lunar surface and / or in the lunar orbit”.
It is not known when this station is scheduled to be completed.
Russia lags behind Washington and Beijing in its exploration of the Moon and Mars, and in recent years Russia’s space program has suffered greatly from a lack of funding and corruption.
Russia lost its monopoly on transporting people to the International Space Station (ISS) last year.
Last year, the US private company SpaceX’s spacecraft Crew Dragon successfully completed the first US manned spaceflight since 2011, when the use of shuttle vessels was discontinued.
SpaceX is also planning a flight to the Moon.
China also successfully returned samples from the lunar surface to Earth in December. It was the first mission of its kind in more than 40 years.
