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Russia has successfully launched Luna 25, the country’s first lunar lander in 47 years.
Residents of a Russian village were temporarily evacuated Friday morning since there is a “one in a million chance” that one of Luna 25’s rocket stages could fall there, according to Reuters.
Luna 25 and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which launched in mid-July, are both expected to land at the lunar south pole on August 23, and it’s a race to see which country will land first, according to Reuters.
Russia's Luna 25 is currently in an "emergency situation."
The Luna-25 spacecraft was supposed to maneuver itself into its final pre-landing orbit around the moon today (Aug. 19), ahead of a touchdown attempt on Monday (Aug. 21) or thereabouts. But the probe encountered a problem during the engine burn.
"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 space agency Roscosmos wrote in an update on Telegram today (in Russian; translation by Google). "The management team is currently analyzing the situation."
Once upon a time, this would have been a significant achievement.
In September 1959, Luna 2 impacted the Moon. It was the 11th lunar exploration mission launched and the first successful one. The previous ten attempts (five each by the USSR and U.S.) had seen eight total failures (those spacecraft all failed to even reach Earth orbit) and two partial successes (one American spacecraft flew past the Moon, albeit it as a much greater distance than intended, and a Soviet spacecraft flew past the Moon though it was intended as an impactor).
But that was 64 years ago. Just making a new crater on the Moon is no longer much of an accomplishment.
Yes, Russia’s first lunar mission in decades crashes into the moon.
The incident, a blow to Russia’s space ambitions, happened after communication with the robotic spacecraft was interrupted.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said it lost touch with Luna 25 on Saturday around 2:57 p.m. Moscow time.
“The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact with it did not yield any results,” the space agency reported.
Meanwhile, India’s Chandrayaan-3,
has a lander, propulsion module and rover — an exploratory capability Russia did not have. The small, robotic vehicle can traverse the lunar terrain.
Chandrayaan-3 is slated to attempt its landing as soon as Wednesday, August 23.
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