Lunar 25 :- Planned Russian lunar lander, Russia’s first lunar mission in decades crashes into the moon
Russian Luna 25 crashed into the moon’s surface, ending the country’s first lunar mission in decades.
After communication with the robotic spacecraft was cut off, the incident—which dealt a setback to Russia’s aspirations in space—took place.
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said that it lost contact with Luna 25 on Saturday at 2:57 PM Moscow time.
The space agency reported that efforts made on August 19 and 20 to locate the object and make contact with it were unsuccessful.
Luna-25 “switched to an off-design orbit” prior to the collision, per a “preliminary analysis,” Roscosmos reported.
What precipitated the collision was not immediately known.
The agency noted that a specially created commission will look into the circumstances behind Luna 25’s disappearance.
The information was released a day after the spacecraft, according to Roscosmos, reported a “emergency situation” as it attempted to enter a pre-landing orbit.
Roscosmos explained in a Telegram message on Saturday that “during the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters.”
Russia’s first lunar landing mission in 47 years was to be accomplished by the spacecraft. On August 18, 1976, Luna 24, the nation’s final lunar lander, touched down on the moon’s surface.
On August 10, the Luna 25 probe blasted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Amur Oblast, beginning a quick journey to the moon.
Due to its trajectory, Luna 25 was able to reach the lunar surface before India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander, which was launched in mid-July.
Years of preparation
The Luna 25, also known as the Luna-Glob-Lander, spent a year traveling in order to investigate the makeup of the lunar soil and the moon’s tenuous atmosphere, or exosphere.
Due to its trajectory, the mission was able to outperform India’s mid-July-launched Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander.
The south pole of the moon was the destination of both spacecraft.
The fact that it is still one of the moon’s least explored regions accounts for a large portion of the region’s appeal. Additionally, scientists think that water is frozen solid in gloomy craters sheltered from the sun in this region, where it is thought to be kept on the lunar surface as ice.
According to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, claims that descriptions that India and Russia were competing for the lunar south pole weren’t totally correct. Both of the projects, he noted, have been in development for more than ten years.
Initially, Luna 25, Luna 26, Luna 27, and the ExoMars rover were all going to be jointly developed by Roscosmos and the European Space Agency.
But after Russia invaded Ukraine in April 2022, this collaboration came to an end, and the ESA Council decided to “discontinue cooperative activities with Russia.”
Eight scientific tools, including specialized equipment known as spectrometers, were aboard Luna 25. According to NASA, one was supposed to investigate the lunar soil, and the other to find surface water.
Russian spacecraft did not have the lander, propulsion module, or rover that India’s Chandrayaan-3 had. The tiny robotic vehicle is capable of navigating the lunar surface.
The landing of Chandrayaan-3 might be the nation’s first successful lunar touchdown. India’s most recent effort, Chandrayaan-2, which crashed-landed in September 2019, was unsuccessful.
The landing attempt for Chandrayaan-3 is expected to happen as soon as August 23.