Russia's first lunar mission in 47 years smashes into the moon in failure

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 596 points – Russia's first lunar mission in 47 years smashes into the moon in failure
reuters.com

Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed when its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after a problem preparing for pre-landing orbit, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once mighty space programme.

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"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon," Roskosmos said in a statement.

It has ceased to exist, it is bereft of life! This is an ex-apparatus!

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So the Special Lunar Operation didn't go as planned? I thought they said it would only take three days...

It said a special inter-departmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft, whose mission had raised hopes in Moscow that Russia was returning to the big power moon race.

lol, lmao

Russia isn't the Soviet Union, they clearly are unable to control the little technology they have left.

i am kinda surprised their space program didnt fall apart sooner. foreign interest in said program somewhat helped maybe.

For a while the Soyuz spacecraft was the only way to get up to the ISS, so I'm sure NASA and ESA were helping them any way they could to keep those working.

And the Soyuz is barely upgraded 1960s technology. Amazing that NASA relied on it.

They had to. The government killed the Shuttle without an immediate replacement.

Young scientists fled Russia because they would be forced to fight in Putin's stupid war.

Any news on how the Indian one did?

I expected Russia’s to blow up on launch, so bully for them for getting it to the moon, but India was scheduled to launch one yesterday too, and I’m far more intrigued about how they faired.

So the "let's give our people nothing and expect them to land on the moon" attitude doesn't work after all, how surprising!

Good thing russia is such a wealthy country, im sure they couldnt have spent the money any better. This is all just propaganda for the home front, so russia can depict themselves larger as they are and distract their own people from the ongoing decline

A failed space program probably wouldn't be the smartest way to do that.

Post-Soviet decline?

Their last attempt at a lander was in 1976 which is (checks notes) smack dab in the middle of the Soviet era ... and it crashed too.

The result of about half of recent lander missions from Earth is failure.

The USA hasn't tried one recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon

Yeah but the USA also completed a highly complex multi-stage landing on Mars without a crash so I think they could do the moon if they wanted to

Been there, done that, got the conspiracy theorists.

Or we're just luring in the sphere earth sheeple from other countries' space programs so they waste resources smashing their rockets and landers into the firmament.

The impact site should be given a suitable name to remember this event. Fascist's Folly? Dictator's Demise?

'putin's promise'. his name deserves to be aligned with a crater of failure comprised of the literal remains of the soviet union's space program.