Russia’s first lunar mission in almost half a century has failed as its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon.
Russian space agency Roscosmos on Sunday said that it had lost contact with Luna-25 at 2.57 pm (11.57 GMT) on Saturday. “The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” a statement added.
The space agency did not give any indication of what technical problems might have occurred and said that a special commission would investigate the causes of the crash.
Luna-25 is Russia’s first attempt to land on the moon since 1976. The unmanned spacecraft took off from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the far eastern Amur region of Russia on August 11.
Russian officials expected it to land on the south pole of the moon on Monday – two days before India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to touch down.
No country has ever landed on the south pole before, even though the United States, the erstwhile Soviet Union and China have managed successful moon landings.
Sunday’s crash comes a day after Luna-25 suffered a technical glitch during a pre-landing manoeuvre, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
“During the operation an emergency occurred on the space probe that did not allow it to perform the maneuver in accordance with the required parameters,” Roscosmos said on Saturday.
Russia’s lander was expected to operate for a year to study the composition of the south pole, where scientists have detected traces of frozen water.
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