According to a Jan. 15, 2013 story in RT.com, Russia is planning to send its first mission to the moon in decades, called Luna-Glob-1, from a new cosmodrome now under construction in the country’s Far Eastern region. The mission will be the first of at least three lunar missions that is planned to be launched from the new space launch facility.
Luna-Glob-1 will be a bare bones mission with a minimal of instruments with the goal of testing a new surface landing system. Luna-Glob-1 will be followed by Luna-Glob-2, which is planned for a lunar orbital mission, in 2016 or 2017. Then a joint Russian Indian lunar mission, called Luna Resurs, will launch about 2018. According to the Russian Space Web, Luna Resurs was designed to land in one of the lunar polar regions to search for water ice, but now is undergoing a redesign thanks to the failure of the Russian Phobos-Grunt.
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