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- cross-posted to:
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Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning into an uncontrolled orbit, officials say.
The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, but failed after encountering issues as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on Monday to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.
Roskosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, said it lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after running into difficulties.
They were actually always pretty good at unmanned missions. This was the same design from the 1970s.
The Russians have a bunch of crashed spacecraft on Mars and no successful Mars landings.
The Soviets were also the only ones to successfully put a lander on Venus, and accomplished this in the 70s. They were a powerhouse when it came to unmanned missions: even with more primative control systems they had to work with.
Of course with the fall of the USSR all the smart people behind those successes could leave, so …
20+ years of hardcore corruption do wonders!
Yeah historically we’ve used them a ton for collaborations in space architecture. I can’t share too much but my team has worked with them, before my time, and they refused to make any advancements in certain systems. Since then collaboration has been incredibly difficult but not because of Russia’s engineers.