Russia's Luna 25 crashes on moon's surface ahead of Chandrayaan-3's landing

Russia’s Luna 25 Crashed: Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft which was launched to make soft-landing on the south pole of the moon has crashed on the lunar surface, the space agency Roscosmos confirmed on Sunday. The Russian Space Agency said that the crash occurred due to a deviation between actual and calculated parameters of the propulsion maneuver which led Luna-25 to an unintended orbit resulting in a collision with the lunar surface.

“On August 19, by the Luna-25 flight program, an impulse was provided to form its pre-landing elliptical orbit. At about 14:57 Moscow time, communication with the Luna-25 apparatus was interrupted. The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get in contact with it did not produce any results,” Roscosmos State Space Corporation said on its official Telegram channel.

The space agency added that it has formed an interdepartmental commission that will clarify the reasons behind the failure of Luna-25.

The crash came hours after the Russian space agency reported some “abnormal situation" with Luna-25. Roscosmos said that the spacecraft encountered an unspecified issue during its attempt to enter a designated pre-landing orbit. The exact nature of the problem remains uncertain, and the agency's experts are currently in the process of examining and evaluating the situation.

“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters," Roscosmos said in a Telegram post.

Does Luna-25 crash impacts the Chandrayaan-3 schedule?

The crash of Luna-25 will have no impact on the schedule of Chandryaan-3 and India's lunar mission is well on its way to making a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on 23 August. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed the landing date and also shared the time of the landing which is 6:04 PM (IST). On Sunday, ISRO conducted the second and final round of deboosting of Chandrayaan-3.

“The second and final deboosting (slowing down) operation has successfully reduced the LM orbit to 25 km x 134 km. The module would undergo internal checks and await the sun-rise at the designated landing site. The powered descent is expected to commence on August 23, 2023, around 1745 Hrs IST,” ISRO said in a tweet.