- Emergency Detected During Luna-25 Moon Descent Maneuver
- Uncertain Impact on Scheduled Monday Moon Landing
- Russia’s Lunar Mission Amidst Global Space Competition
Saturday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that an “emergency” was detected by the Luna-25 probe during a maneuver before its Moon landing.
“The thrust was applied to transfer the probe to the pre-landing orbit,” Roscosmos stated in a statement.
“An emergency arose on board the automatic station during the operation, preventing the execution of the maneuver under the specified conditions.”
The lander, Russia’s first such mission in nearly 50 years, was successfully launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the country’s Far East on Wednesday and deposited in the Moon’s orbit.
Roscosmos did not say if the issue will postpone the Monday lunar south pole landing north of Boguslawsky crater.
Today, a Russian spacecraft is scheduled to descend on the moon’s south pole.
In June, Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov told President Vladimir Putin that such missions were “risky” with a 70% success rate.
The spacecraft is expected to spend one year on the Moon, where it will collect and analyze soil samples.
The lander’s cameras have already captured distant images of the Earth and Moon from orbit.
As the offensive in Ukraine casts doubt on the future of its long-standing space cooperation with the West. Russia is attempting to restart and reconstruct the Soviet Union’s groundbreaking space program.
Russia stated that it will proceed with its lunar plans despite the European Space Agency’s announcement that it will not collaborate with Moscow on future missions due to its actions in Ukraine. The Russian spacecraft is scheduled to descend on the south pole of the moon on Monday, as part of a large power competition to explore a region of the moon believed by scientists to contain frozen water and valuable elements.
Roskosmos said in a brief statement, “During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which prevented the maneuver from being performed with the specified parameters.”
It was stated that specialists are analyzing the situation, but no further information was provided.
Earlier, Roskosmos announced that it had received and was analyzing the initial Luna-25 mission results.
The agency also published spacecraft images of the Zeeman crater on the moon. The third deepest crater in the southern hemisphere of the moon, it is 190 kilometres wide and eight kilometres deep.
Roskosmos stated that the data it has received thus far has provided information about the chemical components of the lunar soil and will facilitate the operation of instruments designed to investigate the lunar near-surface.
In addition, its apparatus had detected “the impact of a micrometeorite.” On Wednesday, the Luna-25 became the first Russian spacecraft to enter the moon’s orbit since 1976.
NASA and other satellite organisations have found frozen water in the south pole craters in recent years. It will run for around a year.
Water might allow humans to stay on the moon longer, making lunar resource exploitation easier for big space powers.
