Russia reports 'abnormal situation' at Luna-25 spacecraft
Sky News
Sat, 19 August 2023
Russia has reported an "abnormal situation" at its moon-bound spacecraft which launched earlier this month.
Luna-25 is an unmanned robot lander and the country's first mission to the lunar surface in almost 50 years.
It's targeting a historic touchdown at the moon's south pole on Monday, but appears to have run into unspecified trouble while preparing for a pre-landing orbit.
Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, said its specialists were analysing the situation.
No further details have been provided.
It comes a week after the craft's data-collecting equipment was switched on following its launch from Russia's Vostochny cosmodrome in the country's far eastern Amur region.
The size of a small car, it blasted off on a Soyuz rocket and entered the moon's orbit on Wednesday. It's since sent back photos of the Zeeman crater, the third deepest in the lunar surface's southern hemisphere.
Russia hopes when Luna-25 lands, it will spend a year collecting samples of rock and dust to get a sense of whether the moon could support a permanent base for humans.
Historic trip to find water ice
The region where it's aiming to land is known for its rough terrain, but is also thought to hold pockets of water ice.
If it does, it could be used for fuel, oxygen, and drinking water, potentially allowing for longer human trips.
Russia is racing against India to make the ambitious landing, with its rival having launched its own lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 last month.
Space agencies including NASA have detected frozen water in the moon's south pole craters before, but no country has ever actually ventured into the region.
A previous attempt by India crashed near where Chandrayaan-3 hopes to land on Wednesday.
Indian lunar lander splits from propulsion module in key step
India's latest space mission completed a key step in the country's second attempt at a lunar landing, with its Moon module separating from its propulsion section on Thursday.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed that the lander module of the Chandrayaan-3, which means "Mooncraft" in Sanskrit, had "successfully separated" from the propulsion module six days ahead of a planned landing slated for August 23.
"Thanks for the ride, mate!" ISRO said in a post on the social media platform X.
ISRO said the propulsion module now "continues its journey in the current orbit for months/years" as part of efforts to study exoplanets, or planets outside Earth's solar system.
Instruments onboard will "perform spectroscopic study of the Earth's atmosphere and measure the variations in polarization from the clouds on Earth—to accumulate signatures of Exoplanets that would qualify for our habitability!"
The world's most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program, but is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers.
Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface.
If the rest of the current mission goes to plan, the lander will safely touch down near the Moon's little-explored south pole between August 23 and 24.
India's last attempt to do so ended in failure four years ago when ground control lost contact moments before landing.
Developed by ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 includes a lander module named Vikram, which means "valour" in Sanskrit, and a rover named Pragyan, Sanskrit for "wisdom".
The mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million—far lower than those of other countries, and a testament to India's frugal space engineering.
The rover has a mission life of one lunar day, or 14 Earth days.
ISRO chief S. Somanath has said his engineers carefully studied data from the last failed mission and tried their best to fix the glitches.
India's space program has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.
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