Luna-25 shows failure of the Russian space program – 08/21/2023 – Science

In the face of the embarrassing failure of the Luna-25 mission, it’s hard not to think that this is an emblem of Russia’s consolidation as a former space power. It is true that the country still has an industry capable of producing launchers and satellites, but clearly the level of competence and innovation required to carry out deep space missions no longer exists.

This was the country’s third attempt to launch an interplanetary mission since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1996, they attempted to launch an ambitious Mars-bound orbiter, two landers, and two surface penetrators into space. But the Mars 96 mission never even reached orbit, due to a failure of the Proton launcher that would take it into space.

The lack of resources that marked the Russian program after the fall of the USSR would prevent the country from quickly recovering from the failure. A new attempt to launch an artifact to Mars would only come again in 2011, with the Phobos-Grunt mission. Once again, an ambitious mission, which aimed to collect samples from the largest of the Martian moons, Phobos, and bring them back to Earth. And, again, due to a failure of the launcher (this time the Zenit), the spacecraft would not go beyond low earth orbit.

Which brings us to the third attempt to launch a space mission alone: ​​Luna-25, with the numbering evoking the successes of the Soviet program, was intended to land near the lunar south pole and operate there for a year. It was the first Russian effort to return to the Moon since 1976, when Luna-24 successfully took lunar samples and returned them to Earth.

The new initiative would be essentially technological: to demonstrate the capacity of a new landing module, which would serve as a basis for other missions. But many, inside and outside Russia, doubted success. In 2015, when more concrete information began to circulate about the new lunar plans, a Russian researcher living in Brazil with whom I spoke was adamant: “I don’t think that Putin’s Russia can do anything good and I don’t believe that these exploration plans of the Moon will come true.”

Eight years later, Luna-25 was launched and established in lunar orbit –which certainly could be seen as progress, in contrast to the results of Mars 96 and Phobos-Grunt– and for a few days it looked like the Russians might complete the mission. successful journey.

The loss of the spacecraft even before the landing attempt, in an orbital adjustment maneuver aimed precisely at placing it on the correct trajectory for the descent, is surprising and embarrassing. Due to a still unknown failure, the vehicle was simply thrown onto the lunar surface and destroyed. There’s no way to describe it any other way: the first country to launch a mission to the Moon lost that capability.

It is not clear how the latest failure impacts the planned Luna-26 and 27 missions. The right thing would be to double the bet and, with that, regain lost prestige. But it won’t be easy. The erosion of the Russian space program is noticeable even in the segments in which it remained fully active, such as transporting cosmonauts to the International Space Station. Add to that the lack of resources and the unwillingness of the West to forge new projects in cooperation, after the invasion of Ukraine, and we have a declining scenario that is difficult to reverse.