Sunday, August 20, 2023, 12:31 p.m.
Russia has failed miserably in its attempt to become the first country to land on the South Pole of the Moon. Its Luna-25 robotic probe crashed on Saturday against the surface of the satellite after a pre-landing approach maneuver in which the device lost control, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, reported on Sunday. “The apparatus moved into an unforeseen orbit and ceased its existence as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” the agency said.
The probe was the first Russia had landed on the Moon in more than 40 years. The south pole of the Moon is a region with significant amounts of frozen water. This compound is called to be the lunar ‘Golden’ to sustain future human bases on Earth’s satellite.
“At about 14:57 Moscow time, communication with Luna-25 was interrupted. The efforts made on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and make contact with it did not yield any results,” Roscosmos reported. Apparently, the boost given to the spacecraft was greater than calculated, so the probe shifted into too steep an orbit and crashed into the lunar surface.
The failure of Luna-25 is a severe blow to the Russian space program precisely at a time when Vladimir Putin wanted this mission to place him in the international spotlight on a plane other than the war in Ukraine. However, Moscow has announced that it will create a commission to clarify the failures that have led to the loss of the ship.
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