Russia: The space agency said that it lost contact with the spacecraft at 05:27 pm on Saturday. An error occurred during the orbit change prior to landing. Luna was to land on the South Pole of the Moon on 21 August.
Roscosmos reported that according to the flight program of Luna-25, the command was given to enter a pre-landing orbit (18 km x 100 km).
This order was given on Saturday at 04:30 pm Indian time. During this, an emergency situation occurred on Luna as the spacecraft could not fire the thrusters according to the actual parameters.
The space agency said the results of the preliminary analysis showed that the spacecraft deviated from the parameters that were determined from the calculations.
The calculated value was greater than required. Due to this, the thrusters ran for a long time and the low speed caused the spacecraft to go into an off-design orbit and crash-land on the Moon.
Luna-25 was launched on 11 August on a Soyuz 2.1B rocket from Vostoni Cosmodrome. Luna-25 was sent from Earth’s orbit to the Moon on the same day. The spacecraft reached the 100 km orbit of the Moon on August 16 at 2:27 pm. The Luna-25 crash will now be investigated by a specially constituted interdepartmental commission.