Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft has collided on to the surface of the moon, its space agency Roscosmos said.
Earlier on Saturday, the spacecraft witnessed an abnormal situation after a command was issued for it to enter its pre-landing orbit.
"The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact with it did not produce any results. According to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface," the Russian space agency said.
It added that a specially-formed inter-departmental commission will deal with the issues of clarifying the reasons for the loss.
Failue of the mission underscores the decline of the space power of Russia since its glory days during the Cold War when Moscow was the first to launch its Sputnik 1 satellite into the Earth's orbit in 1957, and Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut, became the first man to travel to space in 1961.
The country has not attempted a moon mission ever since its Luna 24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev was the Kremlin chief. Luna-25 was estimated to execute a soft landing on the moon's south polar region on August 21.
Russia's Luna-25 had been racing against India's Chandrayaan 3, which is scheduled for a soft landing on the south polar region of the moon on August 23 between 5.30pm and 6.30pm. No other country has managed to soft land their spacecraft on the south polar region of the moon, so far.
Earlier this month, ISRO Chairman S Somnath had said the Vikram lander would make a soft landing on the lunar surface even if everything fails.
He had said even if everything fails, all the sensors, if nothing works, the Vikram landing will still make a landing. He said the Vikram Lander has been designed in such a way that it should be able to handle many failuers, provided all the algorithms work properly. We have also ensured that if the two engines of the Vikram lander do not work properly this time, it will still be able to land, he said.
First Published: Aug 20, 2023 2:47 PM IST
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