Story by Leonard David
Russia’s revamping of moon exploration is off to a rocky start.
The country’s Luna-25 spacecraft plunged from lunar orbit on Saturday (Aug. 19), destroying itself as it crashed into the moon’s bleak landscape.
Yuri Borisov, head of the Russia space agency Roscosmos, reported that the main cause of the Luna-25 crash was an anomalous engine burn. Instead of a planned propulsive nudge of 84 seconds, the engine operated for 127 seconds, more than the "required value" in readying the probe for its descent burn. This added impulse caused Luna-25 to smash into the moon, Borisov told Rossiya 24 television.
Related: Russia launches Luna-25 moon lander, its 1st lunar probe in 47 years
Modern Russia’s 1st moon mission
Following its Aug. 10 liftoff, Luna-25 successfully switched on its scientific equipment. All systems on the spacecraft were working normally in the days after launch, according to Roscosmos.
The probe reached lunar orbit on Aug. 16 and was gearing up to land near the moon’s south pole as early as Monday (Aug. 21). Its primary landing site was near Boguslawsky Crater, though two backup touchdown spots were also in play: southwest of Manzini Crater and south of Pentland A Crater.
Designed, built and tested by the Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin, Luna-25 was to work on the lunar surface for at least one Earth year.
Luna-25’s Aug. 10 launch from the Vostochny spaceport picked up where the former Soviet Union’s moon-probing projects left off. The final Soviet moon mission, Luna-24, successfully hauled home to Earth about 6 ounces (170 grams) of lunar samples in 1976.
Heralded as the first domestically produced moon probe in modern Russia history, Luna-25’s flight was important in both political and scientific terms. The implications of its failure are likely to be considerable.
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