By – Prakarsh Kastwar
On August 19, the Russian Luna-25 lost control and slammed into the moon.
On Tuesday, Russia claimed responsibility for its first lunar mission in 47 years, which crashed into the moon in August due to a problem with an on-board control unit.
According to Roscosmos, the state-owned space organization, the control unit failed to shut off the propulsion system, which continued to fire for 1.5 times longer than necessary as the spaceship sped toward the moon.
Moscow’s expectations that it would beat India to the uncharted south pole of the moon were dashed on August 19 when Luna-25 lost control and slammed into the moon. On August 23, an Indian spacecraft made a landing there.
The disaster highlighted Russia’s declining space prowess since the height of the Cold War rivalry, when Moscow launched Sputnik 1, the first satellite to orbit the Earth, in 1957, and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space in 1961.
Roscosmos claimed to have developed a preliminary explanation for the cause of the Luna-25 disaster.
Roscosmos reported that the Luna-25 propulsion system operated for 127 seconds as opposed to the anticipated 84 seconds when a corrective pulse was sent to move the spacecraft from a circular lunar orbit to an elliptical pre-landing orbit.
According to the report, faulty data commands caused an on-board control system in the BIUS-L angular velocity measuring unit to malfunction. The propulsion system did not turn off as it should have.
The Kremlin has downplayed the mission’s failure and stated that Russia will continue to pursue bold space objectives.