The Luna-25 module has crashed on the Earth’s natural satellite after an incident during pre-landing manoeuvres, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on 20 August 2023.
AFP PHOTO / NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/ARI
Russia’s failed Luna-25 mission left a 10-meter-wide crater on the moon
when it crashed last month after a problem preparing for a soft landing on the
south pole, according to images released by NASA.
Luna-25, Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years, failed on 19 August when
it spun out of control and crashed into the moon, underscoring the post-Soviet
decline of a once mighty space programme.
This handout picture taken on 24 August 2023 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) and made available by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University on 31 August 2023 shows a new impact crater on the Moon’s surface (center) likely from Russia’s Luna 25 mission.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft imaged a new crater on the surface of
the moon that it concluded was the likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna 25
mission.
“The new crater is about 10 meters in diameter,” NASA said.
“Since this new crater is close to the Luna-25 estimated impact point, the
LRO team concludes it is likely to be from that mission, rather than a natural
impactor.”
After the crash, Moscow said a special inter-departmental commission had
been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.
READ | Russia’s Luna-25 smashes into moon in failure
Though many moon missions fail, the crash underscored the decline of
Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow
was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1 in 1957 –
and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in
1961.
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