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Russia’s first lunar mission in decades ended in failure when Luna 25 crashed into the moon’s surface.
The incident, a blow to Russia’s space ambitions, came after communication with a robotic spacecraft was cut off.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said it lost contact with Luna 25 around 2:57 pm Moscow time on Saturday.
“Steps taken to search for and contact the device on August 19 and 20 yielded no results,” the space agency reported.
According to a “preliminary analysis,” Luna 25 “switched to an undesigned trajectory” before impact, Roscosmos said.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.
A specially set up commission will investigate the reasons for the loss of Luna 25, the agency added.
According to Roscosmos, the news comes a day after the probe reported an “emergency” as it was about to enter pre-landing orbit.
“During the operation, an emergency occurred inside the automated station, making it impossible to operate with the specified parameters,” Roscosmos shared in a Telegram post on Saturday.
The spacecraft was to complete Russia’s first lunar landing mission in 47 years. The country’s last lunar lander, Luna 24, landed on the moon on August 18, 1976.
The Luna 25 spacecraft launched on August 10 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast, Russia, and embarked on a quick journey to the Moon.
Luna 25’s orbit allowed it to overtake Indian lunar lander Chandrayaan 3, which launched in mid-July on its way to the moon’s surface.
Luna 25, also known as the Luna Grob Lander, had traveled for a year to study the composition of the lunar soil and the very thin lunar exosphere, or the moon’s faint atmosphere.
The mission’s orbit allowed it to overtake the Indian lunar lander Chandrayaan 3, which launched in mid-July.
Both probes were headed for the lunar south pole region.
Much of the interest in this region comes down to the fact that it remains one of the least explored regions of the Moon. This geographic region is also where scientists believe water is stored on the moon’s surface in the form of ice, frozen solids in shadowy craters blocked from the sun.
But according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at Harvard University and the Smithsonian University Center for Astrophysics, the feature of India and Russia competing for the lunar south pole was not entirely accurate. . He noted that both projects have been in the works for over a decade.
Roscosmos and the European Space Agency originally planned to partner on Luna 25, Luna 26, Luna 27 and the ExoMars rover.
However, that partnership ended in April 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the ESA Council said:cease cooperative activities with Russia. ”
Luna 25 carried eight scientific instruments, including a special device called a spectrometer. One is intended to study lunar soil, and the other is to detect surface water, according to NASA.
Meanwhile, India’s Chandrayaan 3 has a lander, a propulsion module, and a probe on board, which is an exploration capability that Russia lacks. This small robotic vehicle can cross the surface of the moon.
The landing of Chandrayaan 3 could be the country’s first successful moon landing. India’s latest attempt failed in September 2019 when Chandrayaan 2 crashed.
Chandrayaan 3 will attempt to land as early as Wednesday, August 23.
Luna 25 was considered a proving ground for future robotic lunar exploration missions by Roscosmos. Several future Luna spacecraft were to use the same design.
If successful, Luna 25 could be a major breakthrough and eye-catcher for the country’s private space program, which some experts say has faced challenges for decades. It would have proved that eight missions could still be carried out.
“They had a lot of problems with quality control, corruption and funding,” Victoria Samson, director of the Washington office of the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the peaceful exploration of space, said in an interview Friday. Told.
The news that Russia was experiencing problems with its spacecraft generated sympathy and reverberations throughout the space community.
Former NASA Director of Science Thomas Zurbchen said: social media posts No one in the industry wants to “influence other explorers.”
“It reminds me that landing on any celestial body is never easy,” he said in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “The success of others decades ago is no guarantee of success today.”