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The Luna-25 probe, Russia’s first lunar mission in almost 50 years, crashed on the moon after an incident during pre-landing maneuvers, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Sunday.
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Communication with Luna-25 was lost at 2:57 p.m. (1157 GMT) on Saturday, Roscosmos said.
According to preliminary findings, the lander “has ceased to exist after a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roscosmos said.
“Measures taken on August 19 and 20 to locate the craft and make contact with it were unsuccessful.”
The space agency said an investigation would be launched into the causes of the accident, without giving any indication of technical problems that might have occurred.
With Luna-25, Moscow hoped to build on the legacy of its Soviet-era Luna program, marking a return to independent lunar exploration in the face of increasing isolation from the West.
The 800-kilogram Luna-25 probe was to have made a soft landing at the lunar south pole, the first in history.
Russia has not attempted to land on a celestial body since 1989, when the Soviet Union’s ill-fated Phobos 2 probe to explore the moons of Mars failed due to an onboard computer malfunction.
Roscosmos boss Yuri Borisov had said the venture would be “risky”, telling President Vladimir Putin face-to-face in June that the probability of success was “about 70 percent”.
Luna-25 was successfully placed in orbit of the Moon on Wednesday after being launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East.
race in space
But on Saturday, Roscosmos said an “emergency” had been detected during a probe maneuver before it landed on the moon, preventing the operation from taking place.
Luna-25 was expected to stay on the Moon for a year, collecting soil samples and searching for water, an ingredient that enthusiasts hope can be used to make rocket fuel for future launches and support potential colonies living there.
Cameras installed on the lander have already taken photos of the lunar surface.
Doubts have cast a shadow over Russia’s longstanding space cooperation with the West over its military campaign in Ukraine.
While Russia has said it intends to use the International Space Station until 2028, the European Space Agency (ESA) has abandoned plans to cooperate with Moscow on missions to the Moon and Mars.
Moscow last landed a probe, Luna-24, on the Moon in 1976 and then turned away from lunar exploration in favor of missions to Venus and construction of the Mir space station.
The successful landing of Luna-25 would have paved the way for more Russian missions to the Moon, at a time when India and China are launching their own probes and the United States returns to manned missions.
India’s competing space probe, Chandrayaan-3, entered lunar orbit in early August and is also expected to land at the south pole.
Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the Moon.
(AFP)
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