As every space-faring nation knows, space missions are never guaranteed. The Russian space agency Roscosmos reported today that its Moon spacecraft had spun out of control and crashed into the Moon on Aug. 19, when it attempted to move into its pre-landing orbit. “Measures taken on Aug. 19 and 20 to locate the craft and make contact with it were unsuccessful,” Roscosmos reported. “Preliminary analysis results suggest that a deviation between the actual and calculated parameters of the propulsion maneuver led the Luna-25 spacecraft to enter an undesignated orbit and it ceased to exist following a collision with the surface of the Moon.” A special interdepartmental commission is reported to be investigating the cause of the Russian lunar spacecraft crash.
Gained from the Moon mission, Russia’s first in 47 years, nonetheless, is information about the chemical elements in the lunar soil and experience in operating devices designed to study the near-surface of the Moon, as well as new, detailed images of the surface of the Moon taken from the spacecraft. RT cited, for example, the image of the Zeeman crater, which is the third deepest in the Moon’s southern hemisphere, measuring 190 km (118 miles) in diameter and 8 km (5 miles) in depth.
