Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft CRASHES into the Moon after spinning into an uncontrolled orbit
- Russia’s state space corporation said it lost contact with the craft yesterday
- Shortly after the craft ‘ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the Moon’
Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and smashed into moon.
Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday.
‘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.
Moscow had earlier reported an ‘abnormal situation’ with the craft.
‘During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters,’ the agency said in a statement.
Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday
‘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
Moscow had earlier reported an ‘abnormal situation’ with the craft. ‘During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters,’ the agency said in a statement
READ MORE: Russia launches first mission to the Moon in 50 years: Rocket will land on lunar south pole for first time in history as the Kremlin looks to give fresh impetus to its struggling space sector
Failure for the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
Russia has not attempted a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin.
Russian sources are already blaming endemic corruption inside the agency for the failure of the mission. Putin is expected to axe top space officials over the disaster.
The mission had been due to investigate the moon’s south pole in a pioneering mission.
When the craft was launched a remote village had to be evacuated amid fears debris would fall on it.
The failure comes on top of multiple setbacks in Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Failure for the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961
Russian sources are already blaming endemic corruption inside the agency for the failure of the mission. Putin is expected to axe top space officials over the disaster
When the craft was launched a remote village had to be evacuated amid fears debris would fall on it
The space agency said: ‘Communication with the Luna-25 spacecraft was interrupted.
‘The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact with it did not produce any results.
‘According to the results of a preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.’
Luna-25 was supposed to execute a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on August 21, according to Russian space officials.
Russia has been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States which both have advanced lunar ambitions.
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