Luna-25 is in the news for the wrong reasons when the lander was about to touchdown on the Lunar South Pole between August 21 to 23. According to Russian space agency Roscosmos, an emergency or unspecified issue was detected during a manoeuvre by Russia’s Luna-25 probe prior to its scheduled soft landing on the Moon’s surface. The agency revealed that Thrust was released to transfer the probe onto the pre-landing orbit. However, during the operation, an emergency situation happened on board the automatic station. This resulted in the failure to carry out the manoeuvre within the specified conditions.
Roscosmos experts are currently analyzing the data and the whole situation. The agency did not reveal whether this abnormal situation would delay the landing that was scheduled to take place north of the Boguslawsky crater on the lunar south pole. Meanwhile, Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov told President Vladimir Putin that Lune-25 is a risky mission with an estimated success probability of 70 percent.
Lune-25 was designed and developed to stay on the Moon for one year. The main task was to collect samples and also to analyze soil. Unlike India’s Chandrayaan-3, Russia’s Luna-25 doesn’t have a Rover. In the meantime, ISRO successfully performed the second deboosting exercise and placed the Chandrayaan-3 just 25 km above the Moon’s surface. The agency took to X (formerly Twitter) and disclosed that the soft landing is expected to take place on August 23 between 5.30 PM to 6.30 PM IST.
Russia is working hard to restart and rebuild the Soviet Union’s space program. The mean reason is that Russia will find it hard to cooperate with the West amidst the Ukraine war. This was clearly evident because NASA didn’t thank Russia when they successfully lifted off Luna-25 onboard the powerful Soyuz rocket.
Interestingly, European Space Agency also announced that it will not cooperate with Moscow over future space missions. However, Russia is confident that the country will go ahead with its plans to explore lunar space. There are unconfirmed reports that Russia got assistance from China to launch the Luna-25 mission.
Additionally, an unofficial Telegram channel, Zakryty Kosmos added that the mission control lost contact with the Luna-25 lander. However, another Telegram channel Yura Prosti revealed that a computational error caused the failure. The final engine firing was 1.5 times longer than required and this resulted in deorbiting and crash of the spacecraft on the Moon. Despite the emergency situation, Roscosmos continues its attempt to establish contact with the spacecraft. The reliable sources reported the news that top management chaired a meeting to analyze the current situation.
To recall, Luna-25 is the first mission after 50 years and was lifted off successfully from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the country’s Far East. Russia had to evacuate nearby villages before the launch because of the gross impact that will cause as a result of the launch.
