An image of the proposed Russian-US military lunar probe "Dva
Orla"
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, very few projects of lunar
probes have emerged from Russia. One of the few is "Dva Orla" (two
eagles), proposed in 1995.
Dva Orla was to be a large orbiter, built in cooperation between the
Russian and the US militaries.
After launch on a Proton from Tyuratam, Dva Orla was to enter orbit
around the moon and to release a small target satellite to permit
calibration of the main instrument carried by the probe: a powerful
laser.
Once the laser was calibrated, the probe was to lower its orbit to 200
km to obtain a photographic map of the lunar surface with a camera and
a compositional map with the laser and an X-ray spectrometer.
In fact, the laser was to shoot against the surface and any particle
released by the rocks was to be collected by the spectrometer,
determining its composition.
The mapping probe was then to be lowered to 40 km to study in detail
some fifty scientifically interesting sites.
Since any application of Dva Orla technologies was to be a military
one, it is not too sad that this probe was never built.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cotrudnichestvo dlya Budushego: McDonnell Douglas Aerospace
brochure (In Russian)
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