Russia's First Lunar Mission in 47 Years Crashes into Moon

 

Russia's First Lunar Mission in 47 Years Crashes into Moon

 

Luna-25 has ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon's surface: Roskosmos

Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed when its Luna 25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after a problem preparing for pre landing orbit, underscoring the post Soviet decline of a once mighty space pro gramme Russia's state space corporation, Rokosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft at 11:57 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday

"The apparatus moved into an un predictable orbit and cased to exist as a result of a collision with the sur face of the Moon," Roskosmos said In a statement

It said a special interdepartmental commission had been formed to in vestigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna 25 craft, whose mission had raised hopes in Moscow that Russia was returning to the big po wer moon race.

Russian officials had hoped that the Luna 25 mission would show Russia can compete with the super powers in space despite its post-So viet decline and the vast cost of the Ukraine war Theflight controlsy stem was a vulnerable area, which had to go through many fixes," said Anatoly Zak, the creator and pub- lisher of www. RussianSpace Web com which tracks Russian space programmes. Zak said Russin had also gone for the much more ambi tious moon landing before underta in a simpler orbital mission the usual practice for the Soviet Union the United States, China and India While Luna 26 went beyond the earth's orbit unlike the failed 2011 Fobos-Grunt mission to oneof the moons of Mars-the crash could Impact Russia's moon program me which envisages several more missions over coming years including a possible joint effort with China.

The failure underscored the decline of Russia's space power since the glory days of Cold War competition