The Luna-25 probe, the first to be launched by Russia to the Moon since 1976, crashed into the lunar ground following an incident on Saturday during a maneuver prior to its landing, the space agency announced. Russian, Sunday, August 20.
After “an impulse given to form its elliptical pre-moon landing orbit”, “at around 2:57 p.m. [Moscow time, 1:57 p.m. Paris time], communication with Luna-25 was interrupted” on Saturday, Roscosmos explains in a press release .
“Measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for and contact the aircraft yielded no results,” the space agency said. Before adding: “According to the preliminary results” of the investigation, the device “ceased to exist following a collision with the lunar surface”.
The failure comes just as Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to continue the Russian space program despite funding problems, corruption scandals and Russian isolation due to the conflict in Ukraine. “An interdepartmental commission” will be responsible for shedding light on “the reasons” for the incident that caused the “loss” of Luna-25, Roscosmos also announced, which did not give possible causes for the technical problem. occurred.
On Saturday, the terms of Roscosmos’ statement on the problem that arose left little room for doubt. “An emergency situation occurred on board the automatic [lunar] station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” the Russian space agency said.
Roscosmos had not given more details on the circumstances of the incident, suggesting that the worst was to be feared for Luna-25, a device weighing nearly 800 kilos.
70% probability of success
The Luna-25 mission, intended to give a new impetus to the Russian space sector, was announced as “risky” by the admission of the boss of Roscosmos, Yuri Borissov. Facing Vladimir Putin last June, he said: “The probability of success of such missions is estimated at about 70%”.
Luna-25 was successfully placed in lunar orbit on Wednesday, after taking off on the night of August 10-11 from the Russian Far East. Its moon landing was scheduled for Monday on the lunar South Pole, which would have been a first, because until now, the machines had landed in the equatorial zone.
Luna-25’s mission to the Moon, originally scheduled to last a year, was to collect and analyze soil samples. Its failure is a reminder that the difficulties of the Russian space sector have accumulated in recent years, between endemic corruption, chronic problems of financing, lack of innovation and use of Soviet-designed technologies.
The consequences of the military offensive in Ukraine have only accentuated its problems. After its launch in February 2022 by Vladimir Putin, the European Space Agency had thus said that it would give up working with Moscow on the launch of Luna-25 and on future missions 26 and 27.
The Russian president had, however, sworn that Moscow would do everything to keep its place in space – where competition is growing –, taking as an example the sending by the USSR of the first man in space in 1961, in full escalation of East-West tensions.