Vitaly Yegorov, a public relations official for a Russian space startup by day and a popular space journalist by night, launched crowdfunding campaign last weed aimed at building a low-cost lunar orbiter. Last time we checked, the effort had already raised more than 1.1 million rubles (~$18,000), far exceeding its goal.

This remarkable result was helped by the proclaimed goal of the nascent lunar project: to beam back high-resolution images of historic landers and even footprints left on the dusty lunar surface, and thus debunk once and for all the claim that NASA astronauts never landed on the Moon and that the famous scenes of men saluting the American flag were staged somewhere in Hollywood.

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising given the chilly nature of US-Russian relations these days. But now, nearly a half-century after Apollo astronauts walked on the lunar surface, the moon hoax theory is especially popular in Russia. According to a 2011 poll, around 40 percent of Russian citizens believe that the Americans never set foot on the Moon.

Yegorov doesn't hide the fact that while his main goal is to jump-start the Russian planetary exploration program, which saw its last unmanned probe head to the Moon in 1976, he wasn't afraid to use the moon hoax theory as a PR stunt to attract funding and attention. "I would be very interested to explore the Moon and do science, but (the moon hoax theory) is certainly the hottest topic right now," Yegorov told Popular Mechanics.

"If there is a miracle and we are successful, the hope is to create a Russian version of JPL."

NASA

A number of previous spacecraft, including NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have already snapped pictures from lunar orbit that showed both US and Soviet hardware on the Moon. But Yegorov and his colleagues hope to deliver much more detailed pictures, taken from as low as 10 km (6 miles) over the moon or even during a suicidal plunge into the regolith at the end of its six-month mission. Getting pictures of the Apollo landing site from an independent Russian source would remove all doubt— or, perhaps more likely knowing conspiracy theorists, give rise to a new theory that this Russian project had been engineered by the CIA as well.

In any case, if successful, Yegorov's myth-busting project could produce the first privately funded microsatellite to reach lunar orbit. To keep the cost down, the team hopes to hitchhike to the Moon along with one of the larger government-funded Russian, Chinese, or Indian spacecraft.

"We first came up with the idea, when we heard that Luna-25 could have a room to carry a hitchhiker payload," Yegorov said. Sponsored by the Russian space agency, Luna-25, (a.k.a. Luna-Glob), is intended to resume the Soviet lunar probe series, which delivered famous Lunakhod rovers to the Moon and returned samples of the lunar soil. According to the official schedule, Luna-25 could launch as early as 2019, but more likely in the first half of the 2020s. Unfortunately, Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin, which develops planetary spacecraft, recently told Yegorov that it had dropped the option for carrying an extra payload during the Luna-25 mission. This news left the Russian enthusiasts with the choice of waiting for the two follow-on Russian missions during the 2020s or looking for an earlier foreign launch.

Yegorov says he was encouraged by the experience of one Luxemburg-based space group, which arranged with the Chinese authorities to install a small payload on a previous rocket heading toward the Moon. Although that device had remained attached to the booster, it gave hope to the Russian team that they could reach a similar low-cost deal involving the release of the satellite either during the journey to the Moon or, much less likely, dropping it off in the lunar orbit.

"From the outset, we built-in the capability to be able to break ourselves into the lunar orbit. If somebody would agree to give us a ride all the way (to destination), we certainly would not protest, but we are not counting on that," Yegorov says.

Besides finding a ride, the team will face an uphill battle to raise the $5 to $10 million needed to fund the entire project. Even with Yegorov's fundraising ingenuity, the currently available cash is only enough to produce blueprints for a lunar version of a modern drone, which would be able to maneuver according to a pre-programmed scenario, train its powerful optics at the right targets, and talk to ground control from lunar distances. A powerful ground-based communications antenna would also have be rented or borrowed.

But if the Russian moon hoax buster succeeds despite all odds, Yegorov has much less sensational but more important outcome in mind. "The real reason I am starting all this: If there is a miracle and we will have a successful mission, the hope is to create a Russian version of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a private entity, possibly in cooperation with key (scientific) institutes, which would specialize in deep-space exploration," Yegorov says. In turn, the Moon Hoax buster could become a basis for future mini probes going to various asteroids and even to Mars.

Anatoly Zak is a publisher of RussianSpaceWeb.com and the author of Russia in Space, Past Explained, Future Explored

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