Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years has failed after the Luna-25 autonomous station went out of control and crashed into Earth’s natural satellite, intelligence agencies said, citing Roscosmos.
The spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on August 11. On August 12 and 14, the apparatus made two trajectory corrections. On Wednesday, August 16, the automatic station entered lunar orbit. However, on August 19, the direct connection with “Luna-25” was lost.
The probe was scheduled to land on the South Pole of the Moon on August 21.
“Roscosmos” announced on Sunday that their attempts to establish a connection with the apparatus on August 19 and 20 did not yield results.
“As a result of the preliminary analysis, in connection with the deviation of the actual parameters of the pulses from the spacecraft, it passed into an unreadable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” the state corporation stated in its announcement.
A special interdepartmental commission has been formed which will investigate the reasons for the loss of “Luna-25”.
“The flight control system was a vulnerable area that needed to go through a lot of fixes,” said Anatoly Zak, creator and publisher of the site www.RussianSpaceWeb.com, which tracks Russia’s space programs.
According to him, Russia chose a much more ambitious plan to land on the moon before undertaking an easier orbital mission – the usual practice for the USSR, the US, China and India.
The mission raised hopes in Moscow that the country was getting back into the moon race.
However, its failure highlights the decline of Russia’s space power after the successes achieved in the space race during the Cold War, commented Reuters. Moscow was the first to launch a satellite into orbit, Sputnik-1, in 1957, and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly into space in 1961.
Until now, Russia had not attempted a flight to the moon since 1976, when the Luna-24 probe was launched. At that time, the head of the USSR was Leonid Brezhnev, the agency recalls.
More than a decade ago, the failure of the 2011 Phobos-Grunt mission to one of Mars’ moons highlighted the challenges facing Russia’s space program: the probe failed to even enter Earth orbit and crashed, falling into the Pacific Ocean in 2012 .
Ultimately, in the first decade of the 21st century, Russia settled on the idea of the Luna-25 mission to the South Pole of the Earth’s natural satellite.
Its failure means that Russia may not be the first to sample the frozen water that scientists believe resides at the moon’s south pole.
It is not clear for now what the long-term impact of the failed mission will be on the country’s lunar program, which foresees several more such launches in the coming years, notes Reuters.
Russia has been competing with India for this region of the moon, where it was revealed on Sunday that India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft had completed its final maneuver in preparation for a moon landing.
Specialists are beginning to check the systems, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a post on the agency’s account on the social network Ex, until recently known as Twitter, cited by intelligence agencies.
The controlled landing at the South Pole of the Moon is scheduled to begin on August 23.
The Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission was launched on July 14. If successful, India will become the fourth country after the USSR, USA and China to land a probe on Earth’s natural satellite.
Chandrayaan-3 is India’s third lunar probe. The first completed its orbit around the Moon in 2009. The Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission was launched in 2019. Apart from putting a probe into orbit, it also involved landing the Vikram module.
2023-08-21 05:18:16
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