Russia’s first moon mission in nearly five decades has met with failure. The Luna-25 spacecraft, part of Russia’s attempt to rekindle its lunar exploration, lost control and collided with the moon’s surface during preparations for a pre-landing orbit, highlighting the decline of its once-mighty space endeavors since the Soviet era.
The Russian state space corporation, Roskosmos, reported the loss of contact with Luna-25 at 11:57 GMT on Saturday, just as the craft was being maneuvered into its pre-landing orbit. A smooth landing had been scheduled for the following Monday.
In a statement, Roskosmos explained, “The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon.”
To investigate the Luna-25 mission’s failure, a special inter-departmental commission has been established. This mission had raised hopes in Moscow that Russia could once again compete in the global lunar race.
This failure underscores Russia’s decline in space exploration since the Cold War era when it achieved remarkable milestones like launching the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957 and sending Yuri Gagarin as the first human into space in 1961.
The lunar mission’s disappointment coincides with Russia’s economic challenges, including Western sanctions and its involvement in the largest land war in Europe since World War Two, straining its $2 trillion economy.
Russia’s last lunar mission was Luna-24 in 1976, during the leadership of Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin.
Russian state television gave the Luna-25 mission’s loss minimal coverage, ranking it eighth in the noon lineup and dedicating just 26 seconds to the news. This coverage followed reports on fires in Tenerife and a four-minute segment about a professional holiday for Russian pilots and crews.
Russia had been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and competing more broadly with China and the United States, both of which have ambitious lunar exploration plans.
Russian officials had hoped that the Luna-25 mission would demonstrate Russia’s ability to compete with space superpowers despite its post-Soviet decline and the considerable costs of the ongoing Ukraine war.
Russian scientists have repeatedly criticized the space program, blaming poor management, unrealistic vanity projects, corruption, and a decline in the rigor of Russia’s post-Soviet scientific education system for weakening the country’s space capabilities.
