The Russia area company, Roscosmos, on Tuesday revealed that its Luna-25 mission failed as a result of a malfunction within the probe’s management unit due to mistaken information instructions.
Luna-25, Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years, spun uncontrolled on August 19 and crashed into the moon’s south pole. Launched on August 11, Luna-25 was aiming to grow to be the primary mission on the planet to succeed in the lunar south pole in a race with India’s Chandrayaan-3, which efficiently soft-landed close to the moon’s beforehand unexplored south pole on August 23.
Roscosmos stated the propulsion system couldn’t be switched off because of the management unit malfunction within the BIUS-L angular velocity measuring unit, reported Reuters. Following this, the area probe was propelled one and a half occasions longer than vital because it closed in in direction of the lunar floor, added the information company.
“When issuing a corrective pulse to switch the spacecraft from a round lunar orbit to an elliptical pre-landing orbit, the Luna-25 propulsion system labored for 127 seconds as an alternative of the deliberate 84 seconds,” Roscosmos acknowledged.
On August 19, Roscomos stated in a Telegram submit that an “irregular state of affairs” occurred on board Luna-25’s automated station, which didn’t enable the manoeuvre to be carried out with the required parameters.
On August 21, The Week had reported that “media reporting on the Luna-25 mission was subdued and this remained so even after the spacecraft’s crash”. Through the 6pm newscast on state-run Channel 1 on August 20, solely 40 seconds have been dedicated to the crash-landing of Luna-25 mission.
Yuri Borisov, the Head of Roscosmos, stated his company was decided to proceed its lunar program regardless of Luna-25 failure, citing the decades-long pause in lunar exploration as a contributing issue to Luna-25’s failure.
Roscosmos is now gearing up for the Luna-26 mission, which is scheduled for a 2027 launch. This lunar polar orbiter is anticipated to search for pure lunar sources, discover the moon’s floor and research cosmic rays and photo voltaic wind. Moreover, it should reportedly assist with the communication between the earth and Russia’s belongings on the moon.
— with inputs from companies
