Russia: Russia has reported an “abnormal situation” during the landing of the Luna-25 spacecraft, which launched earlier in August 2023.
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, stated that the spacecraft ran into unspecified trouble while trying to enter a pre-landing orbit, and its specialists were analysing the situation.
“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred onboard the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roscosmos said in a Telegram post. The agency did not specify whether the incident would prevent Luna-25 from making a landing.
The spacecraft is scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon on August 21, racing to land on Earth’s satellite before an Indian spacecraft. The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. The frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.
Though Roscosmos noted that the information was undergoing analysis, the agency stated that the preliminary data collected contained information about the chemical elements of the lunar soil and that its equipment had registered a “micrometeorite impact”.
Roscosmos posted images of the Zeeman crater, the third largest in the moon’s southern hemisphere, taken from the spacecraft. The crater has a diameter of 190 kilometres and is 8 kilometres deep.
The launch from Russia’s Vostochny spaceport of the Luna-25 craft on August 10 was Russia’s first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union. The Russian lunar lander was expected to reach the moon over the weekend of August 21 to 23, about the same time as an Indian craft that was launched on July 14.
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