MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/. Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation unveiled its scheme of a flight to the Moon with the subsequent landing of cosmonauts on the Earth’s natural satellite.

The scheme was presented at the readings on cosmonautics devoted to Soviet Rocket Designer Sergei Korolyov.

As the presentation suggests, the Federatsiya (Federation) promising spacecraft and the lunar take-off and landing module will be launched to the Moon separately. For this purpose, Angara heavy carrier rockets are expected to be used.

The take-off and landing module will be the first to be launched. The module is expected to reach the near-Moon orbit (at an altitude of about 100 km) to wait for the arrival of the Federatsiya spacecraft. As Energia employee Andrei Bychkov explained at the Korolyov readings, the waiting time may take six months.

"The slide shows the scheme of the flight, which has been accepted in Energia Space Rocket Corporation for the crewed travel. The scheme is a two-launch pattern where the take-off and landing vehicle will wait for additional time for the arrival of the promising orbital spacecraft and the difference between the launches makes about six months," Bychkov explained.

The docking will take place after six months and cosmonauts will transfer to the take-off and landing module, make a landing and work on the Moon’s surface. After that, only the take-off platform making part of the module will lift off from the Earth’s natural satellite. It will subsequently dock with the Federatsiya spacecraft and the cosmonauts will transfer to it to head for Earth after it separates from the take-off platform, he said.

After the separation is over, the descent capsule will first reduce its speed by braking against the Earth’s atmosphere and then re-enter outer space, after which it will make a landing, entering the atmosphere once again.

At the MAKS-2017 aerospace show near Moscow in July 2017, Energia presented materials showing that the scheme of a flight to the Moon envisaged the launch of two space vehicles by the Soyuz-5 (Irtysh) medium-class carrier rocket. Earlier, there were plans to use four Angara rockets.