European Space Agency to stop working with Russia on three lunar missions

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Wednesday it would no longer continue working with Russia on three lunar missions — Lunar-25, -26 and -27 — amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As with ExoMars, the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions put in place represent a fundamental change of circumstances and make it impossible for ESA to implement the planned lunar cooperation,” the ESA said in a statement, noting a separate mission in which they terminated cooperation with Russia.

Lunar-25, which is slated to launch in July, is expected to study the lunar polar exosphere’s dust and plasma and the composition of polar regolith, according to NASA. The moon’s terrain will be imaged once Lunar-25 lands. 

Lunar-26 will launch into space two years later “for remote scientific measurements and as a possible communications relay for the next lander mission,” according to the ESA.

Lunar-27 will go into orbit a year after that and will take images of the lunar surface near the lunar south pole using a system to match landmarks noted on the moon with those already kept on the spacecraft’s database.

The ESA said it would instead be working with a commercial service provider and NASA for several of those missions.

“A second flight opportunity has already been secured on board a NASA-led Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission for the PROSPECT lunar drill and volatile analysis package (originally planned for Luna-27),” the ESA said. “An alternative flight opportunity to test the ESA navigation camera known as PILOT-D (originally planned for Luna-25) is already being procured from a commercial service provider.”

The development comes amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which has led organizations and companies to halt operations or nix business entirely with Moscow in protest of the invasion.