Luna 25, Russia’s first satellite launch since 1976, crashed into the lunar surface during a landing maneuver. This was reported by the space agency “Roskosmos”. After “an impulse to form an elliptical orbit before landing on the moon,” “at about 14:57 (11:57 GMT), communication with Luna 25 was interrupted” on Saturday, according to a press release.
“Measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and establish contact with it did not yield any results,” the space agency explained. Before adding: “According to preliminary data” of the investigation, the device “ceased to exist after a collision with the lunar surface.”
The probe successfully entered lunar orbit last Wednesday after taking off on the night of August 10-11 from the Russian Far East. The moon landing was originally scheduled for tomorrow at the South Pole of the Moon, which was supposed to be the first, since so far the vehicles have landed in the equatorial zone. The work was originally planned to last a year, and its task was to collect and analyze soil samples.
The failure, according to foreign media reports, came at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to continue the Russian space program despite funding problems, corruption scandals and Russia’s isolation due to the conflict in Ukraine. Now the “interdepartmental commission” is faced with the task of shedding light on the “causes” of the accident that led to the “death” of Luna-25, Roscosmos said, which did not specify the possible causes that caused the technical problem. A problem that immediately seemed serious yesterday.
“An emergency situation arose on board the automatic (lunar) station, which did not allow a maneuver with the given parameters,” the Russian space agency said. Therefore, Roskosmos did not provide more details about the circumstances of the crash, suggesting that the worst was expected for Luna 25, an aircraft weighing almost 800 kilograms. The mission “Luna-25” was called “risky” by his own admission of the head of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov.
Last June, he told Vladimir Putin that “the probability of success of such missions is estimated at about 70%.” Following a launch by Vladimir Putin in February 2022, the European Space Agency (ESA) said it would withdraw from working with Moscow on the launch of Luna 25 and future missions 26 and 27. In recent years, a new race to the Moon has begun. The United States, China, India and South Korea, as well as a number of private companies, demonstrate great ambitions.