[5] The purpose is to prospect for minerals, volatiles (nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, methane and sulfur dioxide), and lunar water ice in permanently shadowed areas of the Moon and investigate the potential use of these natural lunar resources.

[5] On the long term, Russia considers building a crewed base on the Moon's far side that would bring scientific and commercial benefits.

[1] The lander will feature 15 science instruments that will analyse the regolith, plasma in the exosphere, dust, and seismic activity.

[10][11][12] The percussion drill is designed to go down to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) and collect cemented ice samples for an onboard miniaturised laboratory called ProSPA.

[5][10] The ESA payloads under collaboration with Russia was planned to fly Package for Resource Observation and in-Situ Prospecting for Exploration, Commercial exploitation and Transportation (PROSPECT) program's ProSEED lunar sampling drill, ProSPA chemical laboratory and volatile analysis package and Exospheric Mass Spectrometer L-band (EMS-L) high-performance communications payload on this mission,[13][14] but the ProSEED and ProSPA will now fly on a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission in 2025 and the EMS-L will now fly on JAXA/ISRO's LUPEX lunar rover mission in 2026[15][16] due to international collaboration being cancelled after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.