(NewsReady.com) – Russia is currently on a quest to land on the moon again, hoping to beat India to it. In early August, the former Soviet country launched Luna-25, an unmanned spacecraft intended to touch down on the moon’s surface. But the mission ended in disaster.
On August 19, Roskosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, announced it had lost contact with its Luna-25 spacecraft. The statement said that the spacecraft “moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist” when it collided with the moon’s surface.
Luna-25 was supposed to land on the moon’s south pole on August 21. Roskosmos said it was investigating a possible glitch that may have caused it to crash while it was in its pre-landing orbit. Prior to the accident, the space agency had announced it received its first results from the flight, and they were being analyzed.
The space agency hopes to explore a part of the moon where frozen water might be located. Scientists with NASA and other space agencies have all found traces of frozen water in some of the moon’s craters. The data gathered so far has reportedly provided information about chemical elements in the moon’s soil.
Russia’s space program has been on the decline for a long time. At the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine, the nation announced it was pulling its astronauts off of the International Space Station after 2024 and planned to build its own station.
The news that its mission to the moon ended in disaster was another blow to the country’s space program, which was once one of the most impressive in the world. In fact, Moscow was the first nation to launch a satellite into space to orbit Earth. Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957, and four years later, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to ever travel into space.
Russia was trying to beat India to the moon. However, the Indian Space Research Organization announced that Chandrayaan-3 landed on the evening of August 23.
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