IRIA News

Russia’s lunar probe Luna-25 crashed into the moon one day before its scheduled landing on August 20, 2023. The mission was the Russian space agency’s first attempt to land a lunar probe on the far side of the moon and its first lunar mission in nearly 50 years.

The agency said that it lost communication with the probe a few hours before it confirmed that the probe has crashed. Preliminary reports said that the probe was facing an “abnormal situation” after performing initial landing maneuvers.

According to the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the probe “ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon’s surface.” The agency said that its specialists are investigating the incident to determine the cause behind the malfunction. “During the operation, an unplanned situation arose on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be carried out under the given parameters,” it said.

Russia’s Roscosmos statement read, “At about 14:57 Moscow time, 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.”

The statement added that based on the preliminary analysis results, “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

Roughly the size of a small car, the 800kg Luna-25 was the updated version of its predecessor, Luna-24. The probe took off aboard a Russian-made Soyuz rocket on August 11, 2023, marking Russia’s first moon mission in nearly 50 years. The probe was set to conduct a series of experiments and collect samples for one year before heading back to Earth.

Russia’s space agency has been working on the Luna-25 for the past few years and originally planned to launch the probe in October 2021. The mission faced several delays due to several issues, largely related to Moscow’s political isolation following its invasion of Ukraine. The mission was also supposed to carry a navigation camera called Pilot-D supplied by the European Space Agency but that project was canceled after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

Race to the far side of the moon

The probe was attempting to land on the moon’s south pole, also known as the far side of the moon. The rough terrain on the moon’s south pole makes it extremely difficult for any spacecraft to land.

No man-made object has yet been able to reach the moon’s southern pole making it a huge untouched area that may hold significant quantities of ice and other unexplored material. These materials could be used to extract fuel and oxygen, as well as fresh drinking water.

Several space agencies around the world have been working on developing lunar crafts that are able to land on the far side of the moon and explore the area, with India, Russia, and Japan being the frontrunners. Last month, India launched its Chandrayaan-3 space mission that would touch down on the moon on August 23, and it is set to conduct its experiments for two weeks.

Russia’s independent space ambitions

The failure of Russia’s first moon mission in nearly 50 years raised questions about its ambitions to revive its space program. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged to pace up his country’s space capabilities despite the ongoing sanctions. Russia has been pushing to make its space exploration more and more independent for the last few years.

Last year, Moscow also announced its plans to quit the International Space Station (ISS) by 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost in space. Russia is planning to allocate more resources toward building its own space station named Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).

The decision to create Russia’s own orbital outpost was finalized in 2021. In May 2022 Russia’s space agency Roscosmos signed a contract with Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation for making the first basic module for the station.