Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft, which is in a race with India's Chandrayaan-3 to touchdown on Moon's south pole, suffered an "emergency situation" late Saturday. Luna-25 is scheduled to land on the south pole on Monday, two days before Chandryaan-3, but the glitch that occurred on Saturday may delay its landing, opening a window for India's spacecraft to become the first to achieve this rare feat in lunar exploration.
Russia's space agency Roscosmos on Saturday attempted a maneuver to transfer the spacecraft to the pre-landing orbit but during the operation, an "emergency situation" occurred on board the automatic station.
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"Today, in accordance with the Luna-25 flight program, at 14:10 an impulse was issued to transfer the station to the pre-landing orbit. During the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters," the space agency said.
Roscosmos agency said the management team was currently analysing the situation. However, till this morning, there was no update from the space agency on the status of the spacecraft or its landing schedule.
Franck Marchis, planetary astronomer at SETI Institute, said it was s not officially confirmed, "but Luna25 (Luna-Glob) may have met its end on the moon". "Roskomos hasn't denied it, and there's been no contact with the spacecraft for the last 10 hours," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Meanwhile, India's space agency Isro today said that the second and final deboosting operation has successfully reduced the Lander Module's - comprising lander Vikram and rover Pragyan - orbit to 25 km x 134 km. Now, the module would undergo internal checks and await the sun-rise at the designated landing site. "The powered descent is expected to commence on August 23, 2023, around 1745 Hrs," Isro wrote on X.
Chandryaan-3, which was launched on July 14, is scheduled to soft-land on the south pole on August 23. Luna-25 was, however, launched nearly a month later on August 10 but its landing was two days before Chandrayaan-3 as it took a shorter and more direct route due to its heavier rocket and equipment to provide energy even at night on Moon, when temperature plunges to as low as -100-130 degree Celsius.
Earlier, Roskosmos said it had received the first results from Luna-25. The agency also posted images of the Moon's Zeeman crater taken from the spacecraft. The crater is the third deepest in the Moon's southern hemisphere, measuring 190 km (118 miles) in diameter and eight km (five miles) in depth. The space agency said data it had received had provided information about the chemical elements in the lunar soil and would also facilitate the operation of devices designed to study the near-surface of the Moon.
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