According to Space.com, “The Luna-25 spacecraft was supposed to maneuver itself into its final pre-landing orbit around the moon (Aug. 19), ahead of a touchdown attempt on Monday (Aug. 21) or thereabouts. But the probe encountered a problem during the engine burn.”During the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” Russia’s space agency Roscosmos wrote in an update on Telegram today (in Russian; translation by Google).
Per Reuters, “Russia’s first moonshot in nearly half a century has failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and smashed into the moon.Following are details about the mission and what its failure is likely to mean.
It was Russia’s first moon mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna-24 returned with samples from the moon in 1976.A Soyuz 2.1 rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft blasted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow, at 2:11 a.m. Moscow time on Aug. 11.