Luna-25, Russia’s First Moon Mission in 47 Years, Ends in Failure After Crashing on Lunar Surface

Russia’s first mission to the moon in 47 years failed, with its Luna-25 spacecraft crashing out of control and crashing into the moon after problems during pre-landing orbital preparation, underscoring the decline of the once-mighty space program following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian state space company Roskosmos said contact with the spacecraft was lost at 11:57 GMT (5:27 p.m. UTC) on Saturday due to problems as it was being transferred to a pre-landing orbit. A soft landing was originally scheduled for Monday.

“The device entered an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist due to a collision with the lunar surface,” Roscosmos said in a statement.

A special interdepartmental committee has been formed to investigate the cause of the crash of the Luna-25 spacecraft, whose mission has revived Moscow’s hopes of returning to the lunar power race, the report said.

The failure underscores the decline of Russian space power since the glory days of the Cold War competition, when Moscow launched the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, Sputnik 1, in 1957, and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin Then became the first man in space in 1961.

Meanwhile, Russia’s $2 trillion (Rs 16,618,000 crore) economy is facing its biggest external challenge in decades: the pressure of Western sanctions and Europe’s biggest land war since World War II.

Despite the extreme difficulty of landing on the moon, and the failure of many attempts by the United States and the Soviet Union, Russia has not attempted a lunar mission since Luna-24 in 1976 (when communist leader Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin) .

Russian state TV ranked the Luna-25 wreck news at No. 8 at noon and covered it for just 26 seconds, after covering news about the fire in Tenerife and a 4-minute report on the professional holidays of Russian pilots and crew.

failed moon landing

Russia has been competing with India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and, more broadly, China and the United States, which both have ambitious lunar ambitions.

Following news of the Luna-25 failure, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) tweeted on X (formerly Twitter) that Chandrayaan-3 will land on August 23.

Russian officials had hoped that the Luna-25 mission would show that Russia could compete with a space superpower, despite Russia’s post-Soviet decline and the war in Ukraine taking its toll.

“The flight control system is a vulnerable area that has had to be fixed many times,” said Anatoly Zak, creator and publisher of www.RussianSpaceWeb.com, which tracks Russia’s space program.

Zack said Russia had also attempted more ambitious moon missions before pursuing simpler orbital missions — a common practice in the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.

While Luna-25 is beyond Earth orbit — unlike the failed Fobos-Grunt Mars satellite mission in 2011 — the crash could affect Russia’s moon program, which envisions many more missions in the coming years, including a possible Work with China.

Russian scientists have repeatedly complained that the space program has been undercut by enthusiasm for unrealistic vanity space projects, corruption and a decline in the rigor of Russia’s post-Soviet science education system.

Mikhail Marov, a famous Soviet physicist and astronomer, said: “Regrettably, the device could not be landed.”

Marov, 90, was hospitalized in Moscow following news of the Luna-25 failure, but details of his condition were unclear.

Marov told the Komsomolskaya newspaper that he hoped there would be discussion and rigorous scrutiny of the reasons behind the crash.

“This is perhaps my last hope of seeing a revival of our lunar program,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2023