Luna-25 Spacecraft Crashes into the Moon’s Surface
According to Roskosmos, Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft collided with the moon following an unexpected shift into an uncontrolled trajectory.
Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon.
Russia’s state space company Roskosmos said it lost contact with the ship shortly after the problem arose when the ship was steered into pre-landing orbit on Saturday.
“The device entered an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of impact with the lunar surface,” Roskosmos said in a statement.
The failure of the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of the Cold War competition, when Moscow launched the first satellite into Earth orbit — Sputnik 1, in 1957 — and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in 1961.
Russia has not attempted a lunar mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin. According to Russian space authorities, Luna-25 was supposed to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole on August 21.
Russia has been competing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States, both of which have made progress on the moon.
What you need to know about Luna-25
The following is information about the task and what its likely failure means.
LUNA-25
It was Russia’s first lunar mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna-24 returned from the moon with samples in 1976.
The Soyuz 2.1 rocket carrying the Luna-25 launch vehicle blasted off at 2:11 a.m. Moscow time on August 11 from the Vostochny space station, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow.
The lander was lifted out of Earth orbit towards the moon just over an hour later. It entered lunar orbit on August 16 and was scheduled to attempt a soft landing on Monday.
“EPOFORMAL SITUATION”
Russia’s state space agency Roskosmos said an “abnormal situation” occurred as mission management attempted to move the craft into a pre-landing orbit at 11:10 GMT on Saturday.
It lost contact with the boat at 11:57 GMT on Saturday.
“The device entered an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of impact with the lunar surface,” Roskosmos said in a statement.
It said a special commission was investigating why the Moonshot failed.
WHAT DOES FAILURE MEAN FOR RUSSIA?
The failure of the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of the Cold War competition, when Moscow launched the first satellite into Earth orbit — Sputnik 1, in 1957 — and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in 1961.
Russia had not attempted a lunar mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin. According to Russian space authorities, Luna-25 was supposed to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole on August 21.
The failure also underscores the pressure on Russia’s $2 trillion economy, which has so far withstood the West’s toughest sanctions ever.
The West says the sanctions have weakened Russia’s economy, especially its high-tech parts, which are often dependent on imports. President Vladimir Putin says the Russian economy is showing considerable strength.
Over the past three decades, Russia has considered several moon missions, which were delayed or abandoned amid the chaos of the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and the economic and political turmoil that followed.
The failure of the 2011 Fobos-Grunt mission to one of Mars’ moons highlighted the challenges of Russia’s space program: it failed to even leave Earth’s orbit and fell back to Earth and crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2012.
Finally, in the early 2010s, Russia came up with the idea of a Luna-25 flight to the moon’s south pole.
