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Russia - Luna 25

With Luna-25, Moscow had hoped to build on the legacy of its Soviet-era Luna program, marking a return to independent lunar exploration in the face of growing isolation from the West. Russia had not attempted to land on a celestial body since 1989, when the Soviet Union's ill-fated Phobos 2 probe to explore the moons of Mars failed due to an onboard computer malfunction. Moscow last landed a probe -- Luna-24 -- on the Moon in 1976 and then shifted away from lunar exploration.

The Luna-25 probe, Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years, crashed on the Moon after an incident during pre-landing manoeuvres. "During the operation, an unplanned situation arose on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be carried out under the given parameters." According to preliminary findings, the lander "has ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon's surface", Roscosmos said. "Measures taken on August 19 and 20 to locate the craft and make contact with it were unsuccessful."

According to unofficial information, the device received an impulse to decelerate one and a half times more than the calculated one. This means deorbiting and impacting the surface. There were technical problems even before the launch. However, according to the interlocutors of RIA Novosti, they seem to have been resolved. Nathan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke about "disturbing signs" before the transition to the pre-landing orbit. In his opinion, it was necessary to postpone the maneuver. According to some reports, there were difficulties with the pulse-Doppler radar, which measures the height, which was why the launch was postponed several times.

On the surface of the Earth's satellite, there was a graveyard of devices that have made planned and unplanned hard landings - more than 80. In 2019, the Indian landing module Chandrayan-2 and the private Israeli probe Bereshit crashed. In April 2023, the Japanese private company Ispace lost a landing station with two lunar rovers on board. In May, NASA aborted the mission of a small probe (cubesat) Lunar Flashlight, which could not enter lunar orbit.

Experts believe that, most likely, the Russian lunar program will have to be revised. Thus, State Duma deputy Anton Gorelkin wrote in a telegram channel: Roscosmos needs to conduct a deep analysis of all the circumstances of the incident and take them into account in the work on Luna-26. Gorelkin said “Regarding Luna-25, it would be appropriate to recall the wise aphorism “The one who does nothing was not mistaken.” By the way, he has a continuation: “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes - be afraid to repeat mistakes.” Roscosmos needs to conduct a deep analysis of all the circumstances incidents and take them into account in the work on Luna-26," he wrote.

Space agency Roscosmos said 19 August 2023 there had been an "abnormal situation" during a manouver involving the Luna-25 space probe. "Today, in accordance with the Luna-25 flight program, at 14:10 Moscow time, 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" - said the state corporation Roskosmos.

Luna-25 automatic landing module crashed due to a malfunction of the accelerometer that failed to transmit the information needed for the engine to turn off, Yuri Borisov, the head of Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, said on 15 September 2023. "The correction engine has not stopped working according to the information from the accelerometer, this is the device that shows the change in speed. The reason is that the accelerometers did not turn on. Why they did not turn on, we are looking into it in detail now," Borisov said at a news conference. Currently, there are 16 preliminary causes for the crash, 11 of which have already been checked, and the examination into the causes of the Luna-25 crash is planned to be completed by the end of September, the official added.

Russia launched its first mission to the moon in nearly 50 years, pitting it in a space race with India, which was also aiming to land a lunar craft this month. The launch of the Luna-25 craft to the moon on 11 August 2023 was Russia’s first since 1976 when it was part of the Soviet Union and was conducted without assistance from the European Space Agency, which ended cooperation with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Far East took place at 2:10am Moscow time Friday (23:10 GMT Thursday),

The automatic station "Luna-25" entered the orbit of a natural satellite of the Earth, the press service of the state corporation "Roscosmos" reported. The report says that the station's engines turned on twice. To enter orbit at 11:57 Moscow time, the corrective braking engine turned on for 243 seconds, and then the soft landing engines worked for 76 seconds. “For the first time in the modern history of Russia, an automatic station was launched into the orbit of an artificial satellite of the Moon at 12:03 Moscow time,” Roscosmos said, noting that all Luna-25 systems are operating normally, communication with the station was stable. Earlier, the state corporation said that information about the state of the Luna-25 systems would be sent to Earth during the entire mission in real time.

For Russia, a successful mission to the Moon would show that despite its turbulent past and the Western sanctions, which have “really impacted Russia’s space development”, the country was capable of conducting major space missions, ournalist Daniel Hawkins said. It would show that it can do so with “equipment that was effectively made in Russia – Russia’s own brand – to compete at an international level”, he said. Russia’s most recent space landing missions in 2016 and 2011 ended up failing.

The AMS was supposed to land on the main platform measuring 30 by 15 kilometers north of the Boguslavsky crater with coordinates: 69.55 south latitude and 43.54 east longitude. The Russian Antarctic station Novolazarevskaya was located at approximately this latitude at the Earth's South Pole. The main task of the mission was to search for water ice in the polar region.

A sensitive blow to the preparation of the Luna-25 mission was dealt by the unsuccessful 2011 launch of the Russian interplanetary station, Phobos-Grunt. She was supposed to go to the Martian satellite Phobos, but she never managed to leave Earth's orbit. It was planned that Luna-25 would use a lot of service and scientific instruments developed for this device, but after the failure, the concept had to be revised and part of the components and devices developed from scratch.

Discussion of the integrated concept of the general program of the Moon research took place on November 28, 2018. Then the terms of the program of mastering a celestial body, which was calculated until 2040, were designated. It involves the creation of a super-heavy launch vehicle by 2028. Russia was also going to deploy a habitable base and build an observatory. This proposal was addressed to the Roskosmos state corporation and the Russian Academy of Sciences by the Lavochkin NPO.

Roscosmos promised to unveil its lunar exploration plans by spring 2019. The last time Russian instruments landed on the Moon’s surface was way back in Soviet-tinged 1976. Russia wants to start sending parts of the Russian segment of the ISS to the Moon; these will be used to build a lunar orbital base in the following decade, where regular flights aboard new spacecraft will be made.

As the general director of Roskosmos Dmitry Rogozin reported, in 2021 a landing station Luna-25 will be sent to the Moon, in 2023 the Luna-26 orbiter will be sent, and a year later the landing station Luna-27 will be sent. Luna-25 will search for water ice at the south pole of the Earth satellite, and will also test soft landing technologies. The Luna-26 orbiter, in turn, must map and remotely study the surface of the Earth’s satellite, and the Luna-27 landing station will take soil samples at the south pole of the Moon to study. In 2027, the Luna-28 station was planned to be sent to the Moon to return cryogenic soil samples from the south pole of the Earth’s natural satellite to Earth, and Luna-29 with a moon rover in 2028.

Russian space agency Roscosmos said it had scheduled the launch of the Luna-25 lander for the early hours of 11 August 2023. The launch was initially scheduled for August 2022, then delayed to July 2023, and now was being held up yet again due to the final cycle of ground control infrastructure tests. Roscosmos stated that “In order to achieve the required reliability of the mission, it is necessary to take additional measures that will ensure the stable operation of ground controls at the stages of carrying out corrections and landing on the surface”.

With the lunar mission, Russia's first since 1976, Moscow was seeking to restart and build on the Soviet Union's pioneering space program. The launch was the first mission of Moscow's new lunar project and comes as President Vladimir Putin looks to strengthen cooperation in space with China after ties with the West broke down following the start of Moscow's offensive in Ukraine last year.

Luna 25 was scheduled to launch no earlier than 10 August 2023 at 23:10 UTC from Vostochny Cosmodrome. Launch will be on a Soyuz-2 Fregat into Earth orbit. It will fire the Fregat again to go into a lunar transfer orbit and from lunar orbit it will drop down to the surface. Landing will be in the region of the lunar south pole, the main landing site was at 69.545 S, 43.544 E, north of Boguslavsky crater. The reserve landing site was at 68.773 S and 21.21 E, southwest of Manzini crater. Both coordinate points are centers of 15 x 30 km landing ellipses. The lander was expected to operate on the lunar surface, studying surface regolith and exospheric dust and particles, for one year.

Engineers assembled a Soyuz rocket at the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Russian Far East for the launch of the lander, Roscosmos said. "The Luna-25 will have to practise soft landing, take and analyse soil samples and conduct long-term scientific research," Roscosmos said in a statement. The four-legged lander, which weighs around 800 kilograms (1,750 pounds), was expected to touch down in the region of the lunar south pole. By contrast, most previous Moon landings have occurred near the lunar equator. The spacecraft was expected to reach the Moon around five days after launch.

When Luna-25 lands on the Moon, it will image the terrain with a European Pilot-D camera built specifically for landing. The data collected by this camera will be used to prepare for ESA’s next challenge: landing on the Moon with high-precision and avoiding hazards using European technology. Two years after Luna-25, the Luna-26 orbiter will be sent to lunar orbit for remote scientific measurements and as a possible communications relay for the next lander mission. It will transmit data back to ground stations on Earth, including ESA’s ground station network.

Luna 25, also designated the Luna-Glob-Lander, had two primary scientific objectives of the mission: to study composition of the polar regolith, and to study the plasma and dust components of the lunar polar exosphere.

The lander has a four-legged base containing the landing rockets and propellant tanks, an upper compartment holds the solar panels, communication equipment, on-board computers, and most of the science apparatus. Dry mass was about 800 kg, and it was expected to have roughly 950 kg of propellant at launch. The lander has a 1.6 meter-long Lunar Robotic Arm (LRA, or Lunar Manipulator Complex) to remove and collect the surface regolith to depths of 20 to 30 cm. The LRA was equipped with a scoop (175 cubic cm volume) and a sample acquisition tool, a 4.7 cm long tube with an internal diameter of 1.25 cm. The arm has four degrees of freedom / rotations: azimuthal, shoulder, elbow, and wrist/scoop. Total mass of the LRA was 5.5 kg, it uses 30 W nominal, and 50 W maximum power.

There are eight science instruments. ADRON-LR was a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer to study the surface regolith. ARIES-L detects charged particles and neutrals in the polar exosphere. LIS-TV-RPM, an infra-red spectrometer, measures surface water and OH and was mounted on the LRA. The LASMA-LR mass spectrometer will measure composition of regolith samples (1 - 2 cubic cm) from the LRA using laser ablation. The PML detector will study dust in the polar exosphere. STS-L was a panoramic and local imaging system. THERMO-L will study the regolith thermal properties, and the lander will also carry a laser retroreflector panel. Data transmission rates back to Earth are planned to be 4 Mbits/sec.

The Institute for Space Research [IKI] of the Russian Academy of Sciences prepared an interview with the Scientific Director of the Institute, Scientific Director of the first stage (research by automatic stations) of the Russian lunar program, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Zeleny about the prehistory of the Luna-25 mission and its main goals.

"One of the reasons for today's "hype" around the Moon is the possible extraction of lunar resources, primarily rare earth metals associated with metallic meteorites that collided with the Moon during its evolution. And in the second place - the reserves of water ice at the poles. And here the data of the Russian scientific device LEND played a key role .

"In general, there were quite a few experiments that were aimed at finding water on the Moon. Probably, every scientific group that was involved in them considers itself the author of these discoveries, but in any case, Russian scientists played a very important role in this discovery. "Thanks to the data from the LEND instrument, which has been operating near the Moon since 2009 (on board the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ), back in 2010 we formulated the current concept of studying the “polar Moon”.

"No one was talking about such a program then. We in Russia were then slowly preparing the Luna-Globe lunar project. This work was carried out by the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry. V. I. Vernadsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences (GEOKHI), and its task was to study the internal structure of the Moon using penetrators. Penetrators are impact probes that were supposed to penetrate the lunar soil at three or four points at high speed. It was planned that seismic sensors would be installed in the penetrators, which would transmit data to Earth through repeaters. As a result, it would be possible to obtain information about the size of the core of the Moon, which was very important for understanding the history of its origin. In general, this would certainly be a very important experiment for fundamental science.

"A small "lyrical digression". Actually, it was GEOKHI that has always been the leader of lunar research. At the IKI, the Moon did not attract much attention - the main ones were studies of the atmospheres and the plasma environment of the planets.

"But during the development of these stations, the question arose of who could actually manufacture these penetrators? It turned out that there were no such organizations in Russia in the 1990s. Connected Japan. Japanese penetrators even went as far as testing, but it turned out that they are far from withstand the shock load of 300-400 g, which occurs when it collides with the lunar surface. Then English specialists also unsuccessfully joined in, I even saw a special rail installation for testing such devices, but as a result, by the end of the 2000s, work on the Luna-Glob project, unfortunately, came to a standstill.

"But just at that time, we received data from our LEND neutron telescope, which, as a result of a tough competition, we managed to install on the American lunar apparatus Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter . Yes, before that there was data on the presence of water, thanks to the first Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan 1 , but Russian specialists received a more or less detailed map of the distribution of water ice. Moreover, it was shown that water exists not only in "cold traps" - constantly shaded places inside polar craters (which, in principle, was quite expected), but also outside them. Then it caused a lot of controversy, what processes can create such a distribution?

"But as a result, we realized that starting with the study of the Moon, we can think about its future exploration - and the presence of water ice will have to play a key role here. At that time, we very promptly proposed a new lunar program - the program for the study of the polar moon, received the support of the country's leadership, and, approximately in 2011-2012. started working on it. From the academic study of the structure of the Moon in the interests, as they say, of fundamental science, they moved on to the practical study of the reserves of lunar water.

"Then the flight of the station was scheduled for approximately 2016–2017. I didn’t like this index “Glob” - “coffin”, and I am proud that I came up with a numbering option that continues the Soviet series of stations for studying our natural satellite. The station began to be called "Luna-25", although due to inertia in the contracts it was still called "Luna-Glob".

"Luna-25 is planned to be the first spacecraft in the new series. The development of the following vehicles has already been underway as part of the Luna-Resource program. Luna 26 is an artificial satellite of the Moon. Luna-27 is a more complex landing station with a drilling rig. Luna-28 is supposed to deliver soil, but not like the Soviet Lunas, but with the preservation of volatile components, including water ice. If we take a soil sample, as the Soviet Lunas did, then the water, if it is there, will simply evaporate at zero ambient pressure on the Moon, and we will not understand whether it was there or not."