The Luna-25, the first mission to the moon from Russia in several decades, has unfortunately ended in disaster. The spacecraft crashed into the surface of the moon on Aug 19th, at around 2:57 PM, Moscow time. The incident is a big blow to Russian space ambitions. Roscomos’ communications with the unmanned spacecraft got interrupted before the crash took place.
Luna-25’s Crash Under Investigation
According to the report released by Roscomos, the agency had taken additional measures on August 19th and 20th, to locate the spacecraft and re-establish communication with it. However, there were no results. As per a preliminary analysis, Roscomos believes that the Luna-25 changed its orbit to an off-design one prior to the collision. However, the exact reason behind the crash remains to be discovered.
Roscomos further added that the body will form a special commission for the investigation of the spacecraft’s loss. The space agency gave more details via a post on Telegram on Aug 19th. The post said that during the mission, the unmanned station experienced an emergency. This had obstructed Luna-25 from performing maneuvers as per the calculated parameters.
Luna-25 would have been the first time Russia would land on the moon after 47 years. The previous moon lander, Luna-24, had successfully landed on the lunar surface on Aug 18th, 1976. On Aug 10th, the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Oblast in Russia saw the launch of the Luna-25. The probe’s trajectory let it reach the lunar orbit faster than the Chandrayaan-3 moon lander launched by India launched during the middle of July.
Also known as the Luna-Glob-Lander, the probe was designed to carry out studies about the lunar soil’s composition, as well as the scant lunar exosphere. The studies would be ongoing for about a year. Both the Russian and the Indian mission has the south pole of the moon as the targeted landing region.
