Science
Russia's Luna-25 Spacecraft Crashes Into The Moon
- After preliminary analysis, the Russian space agency has concluded that the Luna-25 collided with the Moon.
A zoomed-in view of Russian spacecraft Luna-25's first picture of the lunar surface (Image: Roscosmos/Telegram)
In a disheartening development, Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after it had moved into an uncalculated orbit.
An "emergency situation" had occurred with the spacecraft on Saturday (19 August) while it was preparing for its transfer to the pre-landing orbit.
"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," Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, revealed in a statement posted on Telegram.
Russia then lost contact with its spacecraft after said "emergency situation."
"The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact with it did not produce any results," Roscosmos has said in its latest update.
Further analysis has led the Russian space agency to conclude that the Luna-25 collided with the Moon.
"According to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface," Roscosmos said.
Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years has, thus, tragically come to an end.
Russia has set up a commission to investigate the unfortunate accident and ascertain the causes for the loss of the Moon-bound spacecraft.
When all was alright, Roscosmos had shared images captured by the spacecraft of the Zeeman crater on the moon.
This crater, located in the southern hemisphere, is the third deepest in the region and measures 190 km in diameter with a depth of 8 km.
The data received by Roscosmos, the space agency said, has uncovered information into the chemical composition of the lunar soil.
Notably, the equipment on Luna-25 had registered "the event of a micrometeorite impact."
The Luna-25 was was due for landing on Monday (21 August). It was headed to explore the Moon's south pole, a region that scientists believe may contain frozen water and precious elements.
Chandrayaan-3 is set to soft-land in the Moon's south pole region this Wednesday, 23 August, around 6.04 pm, India time.
Although the Soviet Union, US, and China have all soft-landed on the surface of the Moon, no country has ever landed on the south pole before.
The discovery of water on the Moon has far-reaching implications for space exploration, as it could potentially support longer human missions and pave the way for resource extraction.
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