The Russian Luna 25 lunar lander has an “emergency” while approaching the moon

CNN
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Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said on Saturday that the Luna 25 spacecraft had reported an “emergency on board.”

An accident occurred when the spacecraft was trying to enter a pre-landing orbit, according to Roscosmos.

“During the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed according to the established parameters,” Roskosmos said in a post on Telegram.

“The management team is currently analyzing the situation,” the space agency added.

It is not yet clear whether the problem will prevent the lunar probe, which was scheduled to touch down near the moon’s south pole as soon as Monday, from attempting a landing.

Russia’s Luna 25 landing mission was the country’s first attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon since Soviet times. the The last lunar landerLuna 24 landed on the Moon on August 18, 1976.

The spacecraft launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Amur Oblast aboard a Soyuz-2 Frigate rocket on Aug. 10, setting the craft up for a speedy trip to the moon.

Luna 25’s trajectory allowed it to overtake India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander, which was launched in mid-July, on its way to the lunar surface.

However, media descriptions of India and Russia vying for the moon’s south pole are not entirely accurate, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Astrophysical Center at Harvard and Smithsonian University. He noted that the two projects have been in the works for more than a decade.

The safe landing of a spacecraft on the lunar surface is a major step for Russia’s space program.

Luna 25 is also seen as a testing ground for future robotic lunar exploration missions by Roscosmos. It is planned that many future Luna missions will use the same spacecraft design.

Russia is also seeking to prove that its civilian space program, which some experts say has been in trouble for decades, can still perform high-level, high-risk missions.

“They were having a lot of problems with quality control, corruption and funding,” said Victoria Samson, Washington office director for the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes peaceful exploration of outer space.