Russia has reported that its Luna-25 spacecraft which launched earlier this month has crashed into the moon.
The unmanned robotic lander crashed after it spun into uncontrolled orbit, Russia’s house company Roscosmos reported on Sunday.
It comes after the nation reported an “abnormal situation” that its specialists have been analysing on Saturday.
The mission was the nation’s first to the lunar floor in almost 50 years.
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Russia had hoped that the robotic would spend a 12 months gathering samples of rock and mud after touchdown on the moon’s south pole, which was on account of occur on Monday.
Nonetheless, the house company mentioned it misplaced contact with the craft after it bumped into unspecified bother whereas getting ready for the pre-landing orbit.
“The equipment moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist because of a collision with the floor of the moon,” Roscosmos mentioned in a press release on Sunday.
An image taken from the digicam of the lunar touchdown spacecraft Luna-25. Pic: Roscosmos
The robotic – which is the scale of a small automotive – blasted off on a Soyuz rocket and entered the moon’s orbit on Wednesday.
It has since despatched pictures of the third-deepest crater on the lunar’s southern hemisphere, the Zeeman crater.
Russia was racing towards India to make the bold touchdown, with its rival having launched its own lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 final month.
Specialists getting ready forward of Luna-25 launch
Roscosmos has been eager to show itself as a “house superpower” since the invasion of Ukraine saw its experts lose access to Western technology.