Luna-25 Crash Caused By Computer Glitch

Russia's attempt to land its first lunar mission in nearly half a century ended in disappointment as the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the moon's surface in August. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has now attributed the mission failure to faulty commands in the onboard computer during a critical maneuver.

The Luna-25 spacecraft, which aimed to make history with a soft landing on the moon, encountered its unfortunate fate on August 19th during a crucial orbital maneuver.

The spacecraft was intended to lower its orbit around the moon to prepare for a landing scheduled for two days later. However, things went awry as the mission suffered an "emergency condition" that caused its main engine to fire for 127 seconds, significantly longer than the planned 84 seconds.

Roscosmos announced that the most likely cause of the crash was an "abnormal functioning" of the onboard computer. Specifically, the computer failed to activate an accelerometer in a device known as BIUS-L, which is responsible for measuring the spacecraft's angular velocity.

"The on-board control complex received zero signals from the accelerometers of the BIUS-L device. This did not allow, when issuing a corrective pulse, to record the moment the required speed was reached and to timely turn off the spacecraft propulsion system, as a result of which its shutdown occurred according to a temporary setting."

The Luna-25 mission had initially launched on August 10th atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome. Six days later, it successfully entered lunar orbit, carrying a payload of Russian scientific instruments weighing 30 kilograms. The mission's intended landing site was the Boguslawsky crater, situated at approximately 70 degrees south latitude on the moon's surface.

In a noteworthy development, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft released an image on August 31st showing the likely impact site of Luna-25.

The crash site, on the steep inner rim of Pontécoulant G crater, was approximately 400 kilometers from the mission's planned landing site. The impact site, which formed a crater 10 meters across, was not present in a previous LRO image taken in June 2022.

NASA estimated the impact occurred at 7:58 a.m. Eastern on August 19th.

Luna-25 was not only Russia's first lunar mission in decades but also faced several delays during its development. Additionally, the European Space Agency (ESA) had initially planned to participate in the mission but withdrew its involvement following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Yuri Borisov, the head of Roscosmos, expressed the agency's determination to continue its lunar exploration efforts despite the setback."No one is going to fold their arms, and we are determined to continue the lunar program,"

Roscosmos is now looking at the possibility of adjusting the schedules for the Luna-26 and Luna-27 missions to expedite future lunar exploration efforts but did not provide specific revised timelines for these missions.