Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years failed when its Luna-25 spacecraft lost control and crashed into the moon after failing to prepare for orbit before landing, underscoring the decay of the planet. mighty post-Soviet space program.
Russia’s state space company, Roscosmos, said it lost contact with the spacecraft at 11 a.m on Saturday following an incident when the craft was put into orbit before landing. A soft landing was expected on Monday.
“The instrument entered an unpredictable and defunct orbit following the collision with the lunar surface,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
He said a special interagency committee has been formed to investigate the cause of the disappearance of the Luna-25, whose mission has raised hopes in Moscow that Russia is getting back into the lunar race. mighty. This failure shows the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War rivalry when Moscow was the first country to launch a satellite into Earth’s orbit – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel into space. in 1961.
It also comes as Russia’s $2 trillion (about Rs 1,66,18,000) economy faces its biggest external challenge in decades:
punitive Western pressure and the largest land war in Europe since World War II.
Although the lunar missions were extremely difficult and many American and Soviet efforts failed, Russia has not carried out a lunar mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when the communist leader Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin.
Russian state television reported the disappearance of Luna-25 in 8th place on the noon schedule and covered only 26 seconds, behind the Tenerife fire report and the 4-minute holiday specialist holiday article. occupation of the Russians. pilot and crew.
Russia is racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft will land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States, both of which have ambitions to go to the moon. . When news of the Luna-25 failure broke, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Chandrayaan-3 was scheduled to land on the date. August 23.
Russian officials had hoped the Luna-25 mission would demonstrate that Russia could compete with the superpowers in space despite the country’s post-Soviet decline and the huge costs of war in Ukraine.
Anatoly Zak, creator and publisher of www.RussianSpaceWeb.com, which monitors Russia’s space programs, said: “The flight control system is a vulnerable area that has to go through many fixes. cure.
Zak said Russia also opted for a more ambitious moon landing before undertaking a simpler orbital mission – standard practice for the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.
While Luna-25 is well beyond Earth’s orbit – unlike the failed 2011 Fobos-Grunt mission to one of Mars’ moons – the crash could affect the moon’s program. Earth. joint effort with China. Russian scientists have repeatedly complained that the space program has been undermined by bad managers who enjoy unrealistic space projects, corruption and the strict decline of the education system. Russian post-Soviet scientific education.
Mikhail Marov, a famous Soviet physicist and astronomer, said: “It is very sad that the instrument was not able to land.
Marov, 90, was hospitalized in Moscow following news of Luna-25’s failure, although details about what he was sick with were not available.