MOSCOW, August 28 The Luna-25 emergency commission consists of independent experts who will not hide anything, said Nathan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who took part in the such an investigation.
Earlier, the head of Roskosmos, Yuri Borisov, named the cause of the Luna-25 accident — the station's engine, when trying to go into pre-landing orbit, worked for 127 seconds instead of 84, and the device crashed into the Earth's satellite. According to him, the emergency commission for Luna-25 has already been appointed and has begun work, it will have to figure out in detail what led to the abnormal operation of the corrective engine.
“I assure you that the interdepartmental commission will not hide anything, because the people there are really independent. I give guarantees as a former participant in this kind of investigation,” Eismont said.
The Soyuz 2.1b rocket with the first domestic lunar station in almost 50 years was launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome at 02.11 Moscow time on 11 August. On August 16, the spacecraft entered lunar orbit. On August 19, a transition to a pre-landing orbit was expected, and a soft landing at the South Pole of the Moon was expected on August 21.
On August 19, Roskosmos reported that an emergency situation occurred on board the station, which prevented the transfer to a pre-landing orbit with the specified parameters. The next day, the state corporation announced that Luna-25 had entered an off-design orbit, collided with the Moon, and ceased to exist.