 said that the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after its engines failed to shut down correctly, and he blamed the country's decades-long pause in lunar exploration for the mishap.){kind=link}
The head of Russia’s space agency (Roscosmos) said that the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after its engines failed to shut down correctly, and he blamed the country’s decades-long pause in lunar exploration for the mishap.
Roscosmos Director General Yury Borisov said the spacecraft’s engines were turned on over the weekend to put Luna-25 into a “pre-landing orbit” but did not shut down properly, plunging the lander onto the moon. “Instead of the planned 84 seconds, it worked for 127 seconds. This was the main reason for the emergency,” Borisov told Russian state news channel Russia 24.
Roscosmos had contact with the spacecraft until 2:57 p.m. local time Saturday, when communication was lost and “the device passed into an open lunar orbit and crashed into the surface of the moon,” he said.
“The negative experience of interrupting the lunar program for almost 50 years is the main reason for the failures,” Borisov said, adding “it would be the worst decision ever” for Russia to end the program now.