Russia confirms that the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the lunar surface

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has confirmed this Sunday that the Luna-25 station, its first moon landing project in almost 50 years, has crashed on the surface of the satellite after a failed orbital approach maneuver.

“According to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual impulse parameters from the calculated ones, the spacecraft ended up switching to an out-of-orbit orbit and was destroyed as a result of a collision with the lunar surface,” Roscosmos said.

The Russian agency had already announced this past Saturday the suspension of a preliminary approach maneuver of the probe. This Sunday, Roscosmos has specified that it lost contact with the ship as a result of this failure and all attempts to regain contact throughout the day had been in vain, according to the statement, published on its Telegram account.

Roscosmos has finally announced the creation of an “interdepartmental commission to study the specific reasons for the loss of contact with the ship.”

Luna-25 was trying to be the first station in history to land on the south pole of the Moon. The main tasks of the mission were to test soft landing technologies, study the internal structure, and explore resources, including water.

Russia launched the ship last week in a race with the US agency, NASA, and other space agencies, and in principle the moon landing was scheduled for this coming Sunday.

The lunar south pole is a highly coveted target among nations that carry out space activities, the US and China among them. In fact, the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 is orbiting the Moon and will likely attempt a near-pole landing this week.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: David Gomez, Unsplash)

Visit our news channel on Google News and follow us to get accurate, interesting information and stay up to date with everything. You can also see our daily content on Twitter and Instagram