Russian Space Agency to send a probe to the moon by the end of 2025?
Market Rules
In 2020, Russia announced plans to send a probe to the moon to investigate the presence of frozen water on the satellite. Russian space agency Roscosmos is working with the European space agency ESA to develop machinery that would be able to penetrate the lunar soil in search of water and to investigate the potential use of the Moon's natural resources.
If Roscosmos does successfully launch a probe to the moon by the end of 2025, this question will be resolved as “yes".
Comments
- pedro_brito: I understand the resolution applied here, but my reading of the wording is different. The rule says “successfully launch a probe to the moon” — to me, that reads as a launch milestone, not full mission success . Under that reading, I would have expected Yes . A relevant wording precedent on Futuur is the SN10 market ( https://futuur.com/q/129906/will-the-spacex-sn10-prototype-land-successfully-after-launch ): it used “land successfully” as the key criterion (also a technical milestone term), and that was not treated as full mission success — SN10 exploded shortly after landing, but the market was still resolved Yes . I’m leaving this as a wording note for future space markets, since more explicit criteria can help avoid ambiguity.
- verglasz: I interpreted "successfully launch a probe to the moon" to mean that the mission would be successful, which Luna-25 was not. What else should it mean?
- pedro_brito: Totally fair read — but I think launch success ≠ mission success . Luna-25 did launch Moon-bound (and even reached lunar orbit), so the condition seems met. In spaceflight, launch success usually means the rocket lifts off and the spacecraft is injected onto the intended trajectory (or at least reaches the intended initial flight phase), which is different from mission success (e.g., landing, operating, returning data).
- pedro_brito: https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/russias-luna-25-spacecraft-enters-lunar-orbit-space-agency-2023-08-16/
- mad_: Luna-26 was pushed back. Not sure why the market jumped to 91%. Should resolve NO.
- pedro_brito: Luna-26 was postponed, but Luna-25 was effectively launched on Aug 10, 2023—within the market period that started in March 2020 and well before the end of 2025. So the market’s condition has been met and it should resolve Yes.
- mad_: Hm... I assumed that Luna-25 wouldn't count. Where can I see the market launch date? The oldest predictions I see are from February 2023, not 2020. Still, even that would include the August 2023 Luna-25 mission for a Yes resolution. I am still confused: Why wasn't this market resolved already back then?
- pedro_brito: In play-money, the first prediction date shows up as Mar 3, 2020 ; in real-money, the first prediction date is Mar 11, 2023 . I usually infer the market’s “opening” from the chart start and double-check via bet/prediction history, but I agree it would be clearer if the creation/open date were stated explicitly in the rules. I suspect it just wasn’t resolved because it’s an old/low-traffic science market and nobody flagged it.