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Russia said its robotic spacecraft crashed while trying to land near the moon’s south pole, and it failed in a race with India to become the first country to reach the region.
Luna-25 was meant to mark Moscow’s return to the moon nearly half a century after the last Soviet mission. The spacecraft entered an uncontrolled orbit and “ceased to exist” when it collided with the moon’s surface, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement on Sunday, citing preliminary results of the investigation.
Communication with the spacecraft was lost on Saturday, Roscosmos said.
Meanwhile, the Indian Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is orbiting the moon and will likely try to land near the pole this week.
For Roscosmos, the failure of Luna-25 is the latest in a series of setbacks, after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine cut off launch service revenue for many foreign satellite operators. Luna-25 was due to land at the moon’s south pole on Monday, but Roscosmos said on Saturday that it was unable to enter its scheduled pre-landing orbit.
The lunar south pole is a highly coveted target among space-faring nations, including the US and China. Sensors from several lunar spacecraft have found evidence of water ice in craters in the region. Engineers and scientists have proposed the possibility of exploring and perhaps even mining this water ice in the future, for use in future lunar explorations and perhaps even as a source of rocket fuel.
Read more: Russia’s space program falters after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
By using the Luna name for the new mission, Roscosmos tied the new probe to the achievements of the Soviet space program, which was a leader in lunar exploration early in the space age before NASA eclipsed it with the Apollo missions.
The USSR Luna program attempted almost 50 missions between 1958 and 1976, of which only 17 were successful. Those included Luna-2, the first spacecraft to reach the moon’s surface, and Luna-3, the first to take pictures from the far side of the moon, both in 1959.
Luna-25 “is fundamentally different from its predecessors,” Roscosmos said in a Telegram post last week. While Soviet-era spacecraft landed near the lunar equator, the new mission is at the lunar south pole, a “region with much more complex terrain.”
Chandrayaan-3 launched last month, with a possible landing attempt on Wednesday. Unlike Luna-25, the Indian spacecraft includes a lunar rover in addition to a lander.
India’s previous lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, ended in a crash near the lunar south pole in 2019.
— With the assistance of Loren Grush
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