Russia’s first moon mission in nearly half a century could also be in deep trouble.
The Luna-25 spacecraft was speculated to maneuver itself into its final pre-landing orbit across the moon today (Aug. 19), ahead of a touchdown attempt on Monday (Aug. 21) or thereabouts. However the probe encountered an issue throughout the engine burn.
“Through the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automated station, which didn’t allow the maneuver to be performed with the required 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.”
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That is all we have now to go on for the time being. But, as is usually the case, speculation has filled the knowledge vacuum.
“Russian web is now stuffed with rumors/failure scenarios, and most of them assume that Luna-Glob (#Luna25) was lost. One argument is — had the issue been not fatal, Roscosmos would simply never mention it! ;)” Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com wrote on X (formerly Twitter) today.
If Luna-25 is indeed dead, it could be quite a blow to Russia’s space program. Luna-25 is the primary moon mission developed by modern Russia, and the primary for it or its forerunner state, the Soviet Union, since Luna-24 in 1976.
Luna-25 launched on Aug. 10 and reached lunar orbit six days later. It’s speculated to touch down near the moon’s south pole, perhaps as early as Monday.
The lander carriers eight different science instruments. If it does bounce back from today’s glitch, Luna-25 will use that gear to hunt for water ice and perform quite a lot of investigations within the exotic south polar region, which has not hosted a lander or a rover thus far.