The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, stated that the primary cause of the Luna-25 crash was abnormal engine operation. An emergency commission has been formed to investigate and is already working. Russia 24 reported the information.
In roughly 14 hours and 10 minutes after launch, the engines intended to stabilize the spacecraft and place it into orbit before landing were activated.
Unfortunately, the engine shutdown did not follow the planned sequence. Instead, it ceased due to a timing interruption, running for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84 seconds, according to Borisov, who leads the state corporation.
He noted that terrestrial simulations were performed repeatedly on ground stands before the mission was uploaded to the Luna-25 control system, with adjustments only after verification of the results. He also stressed that the mission operated within a stable radio communication zone, and ground experts had precise knowledge of the spacecraft’s position. However, at 14:57 contact with the station was lost, and attempts to restore it were unsuccessful. Preliminary calculations indicate that the engines’ abnormal behavior caused the crash into the lunar surface.
Despite not achieving the main objectives, which included a soft landing at the Moon’s south pole and soil analysis for water presence, Borisov argued that the mission still yielded valuable experience. A number of scientific experiments were conducted during the flight as the team placed the station in a circular lunar orbit.
The lunar program should continue without interruption
Borisov attributed the failure in part to halting Russia’s domestic lunar program for nearly half a century, lamenting the loss of experience from the 1960s and 1970s. He urged that the lunar program not be suspended under any circumstances to preserve national defense capabilities and technological leadership. Work on Luna-26 and Luna-27 is expected to accelerate as part of this effort.
He also reminded that there is no absolute guarantee of mission success, noting that recent lunar attempts by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and India have fallen short. He pointed out that it took decades for the first soft landings to occur during the early years of the Soviet and American lunar programs.
Where did Luna-25 land?
Scientists from the Institute of Applied Mathematics at the Russian Academy of Sciences have pinpointed the crash site. The damaged probe likely impacted the Moon in a crater area described as Pontecoulant G, near a historic lunar feature in the southern hemisphere, according to the institute’s analysis. The determination was achieved through trajectory modeling conducted by the institute’s ballistic center staff.
Luna-25 marked Russia’s first lunar mission in the modern era, following the Luna-24 mission launched by the Soviet Union in 1976. The spacecraft launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Region on August 11 and was planned for a soft landing on August 21. Its duties included soil analysis and long-term scientific observing. The craft did reach lunar orbit and sent initial images of the surface, but communication was lost on August 19. The mission ended with a crash, caused by a mismatch between actual impulse parameters and those calculated, which sent the spacecraft into an undesigned orbit and ultimately into the lunar surface. Search efforts following the loss yielded limited results.