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MOSCOW, August 20, Tatyana Pichugina. AMS «Luna-25» ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon, Roscosmos reported. An emergency situation arose yesterday afternoon when trying to transfer to a pre-landing orbit, as a result, communication with the device was lost. It was not possible to restore it. A preliminary analysis of the situation showed that the station had crashed.
How was the flight of «Luna-25»
«Luna-25» is a fully automatic device controlled from the Earth weighing 1.6 tons. It was designed by specialists from NPO Lavochkin, based on the knowledge gained during the Soviet lunar missions, but the filling is completely new. NPO Lavochkin engineers determined the conditions for a flight to the Moon and the available launch windows, calculated the trajectory, maneuvering, pre-landing and landing orbits. On board were about 30 kilograms of scientific equipment created at the IKI RAS.
AMS was supposed to land on the main site 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 is located at approximately this latitude at the Earth's South Pole. The main task of the mission is to search for water ice in the polar region of our satellite.
The launch took place on August 11 at the Vostochny cosmodrome. The Soyuz-2.1b rocket put the AMS on a suborbital trajectory, the Fregat upper stage accelerated to enter the flight path to the Moon, then separated.
The next day, the first correction of the trajectory was performed, on August 13 — the second, on August 16, the station entered the circular polar orbit of the Moon, becoming its artificial satellite. At this stage, the scientific equipment was prepared. The STS-L onboard television cameras have been calibrated to capture the lunar surface in familiar colors. -crop-ratio=»0.99609375″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»598″ data-source-sid=»» title=» Luna-25 automated station flight pattern» class=»lazyload» lazy=»1″ />
On August 17, scientific observations began. Specialists of the IKI RAS carried out several activations of the equipment, in particular, the ADRON-LR neutron and gamma spectrometer. It was he who was supposed to look for ice in the ground.
We also tested the ARIES-L ion energy-mass analyzer, designed to study the near-surface ion exosphere in the subpolar region of the Moon.
In addition, we tested the PmL device to register microparticles levitating near the surface of the Moon and to determine the parameters of the surrounding plasma. At the same time, a micrometeorite impact was registered, most likely from the Perseid meteor shower. It turns out that «Luna-25» successfully crossed it during the flight.
On August 18 at 09:20 the engine was started for 40 seconds. «The correction went through normally, all the onboard systems of Luna-25 are working normally, the connection is stable,» the press service of Roscosmos reported.
During the flight, the onboard television system (STS-L), developed at with the participation of MIIGAIK, sent several photographs to Earth. Four wide-angle and four narrow-angle cameras perform panoramic, panoramic and stereo shooting.
The first pictures were received on August 13 from a distance of about 310 thousand kilometers. You can see the design elements of the apparatus against the background of the Earth, the emblem of the mission and the bucket of the onboard manipulator. Another snapshot received on August 16th. -width=»600″ data-crop-height=»338″ data-source-sid=»» title=»First images taken from Luna-25 station» class=»» />
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The station sent a picture of the lunar surface from a polar circular orbit on August 17th. This image captures the south polar crater Zeeman on the far side of the Moon.
What happened in the lunar orbit
Further, the AMS was supposed to descend into a pre-landing orbit with a height of 18 kilometers at the bottom point and land on August 21 around noon using high and low thrust engines.
Braking began on August 19 at 14:10.
«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. At present, the specialists of the control group are analyzing the situation,» he informed Roskosmos.
A discussion of the emergency situation has unfolded on social networks. Experts recalled that disruption of communication with spacecraft is not uncommon. So, at the end of July, NASA lost contact with the Voyager-2 probe for two weeks when reorienting the antenna. True, its location was known, unlike Luna-25.
Experts explained that the orbital rotation of the Earth interferes. When the moon goes below the horizon, ground communication facilities in Russia do not see the device.
At night, a number of telegram channels reported on a meeting at NPO Lavochkin with the participation of the first deputy general director for development and promising projects of Roscosmos, Alexander Ivanov. According to unofficial information, the device received an impulse for braking one and a half times more than the calculated one. This means deorbiting and hitting the ground.
There were technical problems before launch. However, according to the interlocutors, they seem to have been resolved.
Natan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke about the «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, because of which the launch was postponed several times. Communication with the device was interrupted on August 19 at 14:57 when trying to form an elliptical pre-landing orbit, Roscosmos specified. url=»https://ria.ru/20230811/luna-25-1889281487.html» data-title='Automatic interplanetary station «Luna-25″'>
«The measures taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the spacecraft and get in touch with it did not produce any results. According to the results of the preliminary analysis, due to the deviation of the actual impulse parameters from the calculated ones, the spacecraft switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface «, the official communiqué says. An interdepartmental commission will investigate the causes of the accident. The location of the station's fall is unknown.
What's next
Luna-25 is the third Russian interplanetary mission that ended in failure. In 1996, the Mars-96 AMS was lost; in 2011, the Phobos-Grunt probe did not leave the Earth's orbit. Both vehicles were sunk in the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, there were two very successful orbital scientific projects — the Radioastron radio telescope and the Spektr-RG X-ray-gamma-ray telescope, and Russia also participated in the first stage of the ExoMars mission in 2016.
The Soviet Union sent 24 spacecraft to the Moon. The latter delivered more than a hundred kilograms of soil to Earth. It was in these samples that scientists from GEOKHI found water, which marked the beginning — after observational confirmation of this fact in the 2000s — a new lunar race.
It is worth noting that the flight to the moon and landing is an extremely difficult undertaking. On the surface of the Earth’s satellite, there is 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 the 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. For example, State Duma deputy Anton Gorelkin wrote on his telegram channel: Roscosmos needs to conduct a deep analysis of all the circumstances of the incident and take them into account when working on Luna-26.
If everything was normal with Luna-25, the Luna-26 orbiter and the Luna-27 landing station with a drilling rig and a lunar rover would follow.
Four vehicles are currently operating in the Moon's orbit: the American station Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Indian Chandrayaan-2, Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), launched last year by South Korea, India's Chandrayaan-3 probe with the Vikram lander, is preparing to land on the south polar region on August 23. And on August 26, another Japanese lander with a lunar rover will go to the Moon.