NASA announced Thursday that Russia’s Luna-25 probe probably left a 33-foot-wide crater on the moon’s surface after it lost control before crashing last month, sharing photographs of the potential impact site.
As reported by Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years ended in disaster on August 19 when the Luna-25 probe crashed into the moon shortly after a thruster fire went awry, cutting off communications as well as setting the spacecraft on an incorrect orbital route.
Luna-25 Crash Investigation
Moscow has formed a panel to investigate the cause of the Luna-25 disaster.
The failure was a big setback for Russia’s space program, which was attempting to step up its game in the face of growing interest in the moon’s southern pole area, where ice deposits may reside in permanently shadowed craters.
Ice could provide a mechanism for future space missions to generate breathing air, water, and perhaps hydrogen rocket fuel.
Luna-25 was an attempt to re-establish Russia in a new space race, as the United States, China, India, Japan, as well as the private sector all planned multiple moon trips that might lay the groundwork for lunar outposts and eventual journeys to Mars.
Since the Luna-24 robot arrived on the moon in 1976, Russia has had little success with autonomous space exploration. In Russia’s third successful robotic lunar sample return mission, it gathered up around six ounces of lunar dirt and returned it to Earth.
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Chandrayaan-3 Vikram Lander Land On Moon’s South Pole
12 NASA astronauts stepped on the moon in the Apollo program half a century ago, yet no Russian cosmonauts ever did. Russia’s only prior post-Soviet deep space robotic missions, both aimed at Mars, were both unsuccessful.
Just a few days after the Russian probe crashed, India’s Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lunar lander achieved a spectacular touch-down near the moon’s south pole. It launched a lunar rover, which has already returned data from soil samples.
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