Russia’s first lunar mission in nearly half a century came to a violent end when its unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after encountering a problem when it began preparing for pre-landing orbit.
Russian officials had hoped the prestige mission would show they can still compete in space despite their post-Soviet decline and the extreme loss suffered in the Ukraine war.
Its failure highlighted the intense decline of Russia’s authority over space since the days of the Cold War, when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite — Sputnik 1 — to orbit the Earth.
The Luna-25 mission, launched Aug 11, was Russia’s first attempt at sending a spacecraft to the moon since Luna-24 in 1976.
Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, lost contact with the spacecraft at 11:57 GMT Saturday as the ship began experiencing issues while beginning for pre-landing orbit, the agency said.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roskosmos said in a statement.
A special interdepartmental commission has been formed to investigate the ship’s failure, officials said.
Luna-25 was expected to land on Monday.
The loss also comes as Russia’s $2 trillion economy faces both Western sanctions and the largest land war in Europe since World War Two.
As news of Russia’s loss began to spread, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced its latest competitor spacecraft was set to land on the moon’s south pole this week.
“India’s Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the moon on August 23,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted on X, formerly Twitter, around the time news of the Luna crash broke.
According to Anatony Zak, the creator and publisher of http://www.RussianSpaceWeb.com, which tracks Russian space programs, Russia’s latest spacecraft faced too many unfixable issues.
“The flight control system was a vulnerable area, which had to go through many fixes,” Zak said.
With Luna-25, Russia was also attempting a much more ambitious moon landing before undertaking a simpler orbital mission.
Russian scientists have long complained about their declining space program, saying they have now set their sights on unrealistic vanity projects.
Similar issues came to light over a decade ago with the failed Fobos-Grunt mission in 2011, when Russia’s spacecraft headed to Mars couldn’t even exit Earth’s orbit before falling back and smashing into the Pacific Ocean in 2012.
In the early 2010s, Russia set its sights on Luna-25, which was able to exit the Earth’s orbit. The spacecraft’s failure, however, means that Russian scientists may not be the first to sample the frozen water they believe the south pole of the moon holds.
With Post wires