Russia’s Luna-25 interplanetary station crashes during lunar landing

The Russian automatic interplanetary station Luna-25 “ceased to exist” as a result of a collision with the Moon's surface.

This was reported by the Roscosmos press service, according to Ukrinform.

"On August 19, according to the Luna-25 flight program, it was planned to release an impulse to form its pre-landing elliptical orbit. At around 14:57, signal from Luna-25 was lost. On August 19 and 20, efforts to locate the device and reestablish communication yielded no results. According to the preliminary analysis, in connection with the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the device went into an uncalculated orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the Moon's surface," the agency said.

Roscosmos added that an interdepartmental commission will be formed to investigate the cause of the incident.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, Roscosmos announced yesterday that an emergency situation occurred during the transition of the Luna-25 automatic station to the pre-landing orbit.

The Luna-25 automatic station was on the first lunar mission in Russia’s modern history. The previous project, Luna-24, was launched in 1976 by the USSR. On August 19, Luna-25 started descending to the pre-landing orbit.