Russia's first lunar mission failed, the space probe Moon-25 went out of control and crashed on the Moon following a pre-landing orbit preparation problem. A failure that highlights the post-Soviet decline on a space program.
The Russian state space agency, Roskosmos, said he lost contact with the aircraft at 11:57 GMT on Saturday following a problem during pre-landing orbit preparation. The soft landing was scheduled for Monday 21st August.
"The craft shifted into an unexpected orbit and crashed on the surface of the Moon."Roskosmos said in a statement.
Roskosmos said a special interdepartmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons for the loss of the Luna-25 aircraft, whose mission had raised hopes in Moscow that Russia was returning, as a great power, to the moon.
The failure underlined the decline of Russian space power since the glory days of the Cold War, when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite into orbit around the Earth (Sputnik 1, in 1957) and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
The initiative also comes as the $2.000 trillion Russian economy faces its biggest external challenge in decades: pressure from Western sanctions following the war in Ukraine with runaway inflation in the face of a very weak ruble on the markets.
Russia had attempted a lunar mission in 1976 with Luna-24, when the communist leader Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin.
Russian state television broke the news of the loss of Luna-25 during the noon broadcast, devoting only 26 seconds, following a news story about the fires in Tenerife and a 4-minute report about a professional holiday for Russian pilots and crews .
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