The Russia space agency, Roscosmos, on Tuesday revealed that its Luna-25 mission failed due to a malfunction in the probe's control unit because of wrong data commands.
Luna-25, Russia's first lunar mission in 47 years, spun out of control on August 19 and crashed into the moon's south pole. Launched on August 11, Luna-25 was aiming to become the first mission in the world to reach the lunar south pole in a race with India's Chandrayaan-3, which successfully soft-landed near the moon's previously unexplored south pole on August 23.
Roscosmos said the propulsion system could not be switched off due to the control unit malfunction in the BIUS-L angular velocity measuring unit, reported Reuters. Following this, the space probe was propelled one and a half times longer than necessary as it closed in towards the lunar surface, added the news agency.
"When issuing a corrective pulse to transfer the spacecraft from a circular lunar orbit to an elliptical pre-landing orbit, the Luna-25 propulsion system worked for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84 seconds," Roscosmos stated.
On August 19, Roscomos said in a Telegram post that an “abnormal situation” occurred on board Luna-25's automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters.
On August 21, The Week had reported that “media reporting on the Luna-25 mission was subdued and this remained so even after the spacecraft’s crash”. During the 6pm newscast on state-run Channel 1 on August 20, only 40 seconds were devoted to the crash-landing of Luna-25 mission.
Yuri Borisov, the Head of Roscosmos, said his agency was determined to continue its lunar program despite Luna-25 failure, citing the decades-long pause in lunar exploration as a contributing factor to Luna-25's failure.
Roscosmos is now gearing up for the Luna-26 mission, which is scheduled for a 2027 launch. This lunar polar orbiter is expected to look for natural lunar resources, explore the moon's surface and study cosmic rays and solar wind. Furthermore, it will reportedly help with the communication between the earth and Russia's assets on the moon.
-- with inputs from agencies
