Officials have reported that Russia’s unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after losing control. This marked Russia’s initial Moon mission in almost five decades.
Initially aimed to be the pioneering Moon lander at the southern pole, the spacecraft encountered issues during its pre-landing orbit, leading to its failure.
The objective was to explore a Moon region believed to contain frozen water and valuable elements.
On Sunday morning, Roscosmos, Russia’s state space agency, announced the loss of contact with Luna-25 shortly after 14:57pm (11:57 GMT) on Saturday. According to preliminary findings, the 800kg lander collided with the Moon’s surface, resulting in its disappearance. A dedicated committee will investigate the causes of this mission failure.
This setback hits Roscosmos hard, as Russia’s civil space program has been declining due to increasing diversion of state funding towards military endeavors.
Russia was in a race against India, as their Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was scheduled to reach the Moon’s south pole the following week. The mission aimed to deploy a rover for examining rocks and craters in order to gather data and images, with the Moon’s permanently shadowed areas holding potential for water discovery.
A spokesperson for India’s space agency Isro expressed regret over the Luna-25 crash, acknowledging the inherent risks of space missions. Roscosmos had also recognized the mission’s riskiness.
Luna-25 was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on August 11 and entered the Moon’s orbit successfully last Wednesday.
Originally planned for a soft landing on Monday or Tuesday, Luna-25 aimed to make history, as no country had previously landed on the Moon’s southern pole. While the US and China had both achieved soft landings on the Moon’s surface, the south pole remained unexplored in this manner.
Russia’s last Moon mission was in 1976 during the Soviet Union era
