Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into lunar surface

The Soyuz-2.1b rocket taking off with Luna-25 on August 11. Pic/AP

Russia's robot lander, the Luna-25 spacecraft, crashed into the moon after it had spun into uncontrolled orbit, the country's space agency Roscosmos reported on Sunday. "The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon," read a statement from the agency.

Roscosmos said it lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday after it ran into trouble while preparing for its pre-landing orbit after reporting an "abnormal situation" that its specialists were analysing. "During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters," the agency said in a Telegram post.

The Russian lunar lander, launched earlier this month, was racing to land on Earth's satellite ahead of an Indian spacecraft, launched on July 14. Both were expected to reach the moon between August 21-23.

Only three governments have managed successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the US and China, but not on the moon's South Pole. India and Russia have been racing to be the first countries to land there.

The lunar South Pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. The frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.

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