Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft, the country’s first lunar lander in nearly 50 years, has failed to enter pre-landing orbit of moon. According to the authorities, the spacecraft suffered a technical glitch while trying to enter a pre-landing orbit.
Roscomos, Russia’s space agency, said on Saturday that the spacecraft ran into unspecified trouble during the mission and specialists were analysing the situation.
The space agency in a Telegram post said that an “abnormal situation” occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters. However, it did not specify whether the incident will prevent Luna-25 from making a landing.
With the delay in the planned course of landing, rumours of mission "failure" are rife in social media. Reportedly, trouble with the engine has caused the problem.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon between Monday and Wednesday. It was racing against India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission.
The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water, reported The Associated Press. It is believed that the frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.
Roscosmos said that the spacecraft produced its first results and the information was undergoing analysis. “The preliminary data obtained contained information about the chemical elements of the lunar soil and that its equipment had registered a micrometeorite impact,” it said.
The pictures of the Zeeman crater, the third largest in moon’s southern hemisphere, taken from the spacecraft was shared by the agency.
Russia’s Moon mission was launched earlier this year and the spacecraft was launched on August 11. The spacecraft performed two trajectory correction on August 12 and 14.
Chandrayaan-3 is also expected to make the landing on Wednesday.
The Soviet Union, the United States and China were countries that managed to make successful moon landings. Russia and India is in the race for the first time.
With the ongoing war with Ukraine, Russia space program was hit hard as the access to the technology from the Western countries got limited.