The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, said that the main reason for the crash of the Russian interplanetary station Luna-25 was the abnormal operation of the engines, the emergency commission on this issue has already been established and began to work. TV channel “Russia 24”.
“In 14 hours and 10 minutes [19 августа] The engines that were supposed to fix the device and put it into orbit before landing were turned on.
“Unfortunately the engine shutdown did not occur normally according to the cyclogram, but it worked according to a time interruption and for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84 seconds.”
– said the head of the state company.
According to him, simulations were run repeatedly on the ground stand before adjustments were made, and the flight mission was uploaded to the Luna-25 board only after its results had been confirmed.
Borisov also stressed that the experiment was conducted in a stable radio communication zone, Russian experts “know everything about the position of the ship”, but at 14:57 communication with the station was lost and attempts to re-establish it were unsuccessful. He added that according to preliminary calculations, the abnormal operation of the engines caused the device to crash into the lunar surface.
At the same time, the head of Roskosmos said that even if the main task of the device was not fulfilled – the soft landing of the moon at the south pole, the removal of lunar soil and its analysis for the presence of water – Russia is gaining experience. Many scientific experiments were also carried out during the flight of the team, which flew to a natural satellite of the Earth and placed the station in a circular lunar orbit.
“The lunar program should not be interrupted under any circumstances”
As one of the factors explaining the failure of the Luna-25 mission, Borisov called for the interruption of the domestic lunar program for almost half a century. Emphasizing that the experience gained in the 1960s and 1970s was actually lost, he said, “After all, we haven’t been studying the Moon for about fifty years.”
The head of the state company urged not to interrupt the lunar program “in any case” and to continue research in this direction, as it is necessary to “ensure the country’s defensive capability and ensure technological dominance.” According to him, work on the Luna-26 and Luna-27 missions will be accelerated.
The head of Roskosmos added that “no one can guarantee the success of such missions”, and reminded that the missions of Israel, the United Arab Emirates and India in the last four years have also failed to land on the moon. “It took decades for the first soft landings to occur,” as the USSR and the United States launched their lunar programs.
Where did the Luna-25 land?
Scientists from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences managed to determine the exact location of the fall of the Russian station on the moon. telegraph channel organizations.
According to experts, the device crashed into the surface of the Earth’s satellite in the 42-kilometer-long Pontecoulant G crater, located near the ancient Ponteculan circus in the southern hemisphere.
The result was obtained by the Institute’s ballistic center staff using mathematical modeling of the station’s trajectory.
Luna-25 was the first lunar mission in modern Russian history; its predecessor, the Luna-24, was launched by the USSR in 1976. The device went to the Moon from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Amur Region on August 11 and was expected to make a soft landing on August 21.
The station’s duties also included soil analysis and long-term scientific research. It managed to enter lunar orbit and transmit the first images of the satellite’s surface, but communication with the device was lost on August 19. The station collapsed, as later confirmed by Roscosmos. The government agency explained that due to the deviation of the actual parameters of the impulse from the calculated ones, the station went into an undesigned orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface. Measures to search for the device were inconclusive.