MOSCOW, 22 Aug. The Luna-25 engine, when trying to go into a pre-drop orbit, worked for 127 seconds instead of 84, and the device «crashed» into the Earth's satellite, Yury Borisov, head of Roscosmos, said on the air of the Rossiya 24 TV channel.
“Unfortunately, the engine shutdown did not occur normally, in accordance with the cyclogram, but according to a time cutoff, and instead of the planned 84 seconds, it worked for 127 seconds. This was the main cause of the device’s accident,” he said
According to him, the entire experiment was carried out in a zone of stable radio communication, the specialists knew «everything about the position of the ship», but on Saturday at 14.57 communication with it was interrupted and attempts to restore it ended in failure.
Preliminary ballistic calculations, as Borisov noted, indicate that due to the abnormal operation of the corrective engines, the device «transferred to an open lunar orbit and, in fact, crashed into the surface of the Moon.»