The launch kicked off Moscow's first moon mission in nearly 50 years and was part of an effort to eventually build a base on the moon.
The lunar south pole may have plentiful water in the form of ice in the shade of mountain ridges.
"The first goal is to find the water, to confirm that it is there ... to study its abundance," said Olga Zakutnyaya, from the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Luna-25 will take five days to travel to the moon and is scheduled to circle it for five to seven days before attempting a landing near Boguslawsky Crater in the south polar region.
According to Russian state news agency TASS the Luna-25 spacecraft will land on the moon Aug. 21.
Roscosmos Director General Yury Borisov said the goals of the mission "are of purely peaceful nature."
The spacecraft will be looking for water as well as studying the effects of space rays and electromagnetic emissions on the lunar surface.
Russia Space Research Institute scientist Maxim Litvak said Luna-25's most important task is to sit where no one has sat.
"Now everyone is aiming for the polar regions; this area is intriguing to everyone in the scientific community," Litvak said. "There are signs of ice in the soil of the Luna-25 landing area; this can be seen from data from orbit. In the equatorial regions where we landed earlier, this is not the case."
The United States is the only nation to land people on the moon's surface, but India launched its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft July 14 and entered lunar orbit Aug. 6.
In May China announced plans to send its first manned mission to the moon by 2030.
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