Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning into an uncontrolled orbit, officials say.
The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, but failed after encountering issues as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on Monday to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.
Roskosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, said it lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after running into difficulties.
Normally, I’d say that it’s a great shame that a piece of valuable scientific equipment was lost and that it’s a massive loss to humanity as a whole as the international scientific community is usually able to co-operate regardless of boarders.
But this time, Russia said they won’t be sharing any data gathered from this probe with the international community and would be keeping it all to themselves so suddenly I don’t give a shit.
I agree but I’m also happy that Putin doesn’t get a win by presenting this as “Russia is great and all because of me”.
Reminds me state TV propoganda “no Putin - no Russia”.
Technically he won, otherwise it was vicroty of science over Putin’s corruption.
I’m huge space nerd, but I personally wouldn’t say that loss of space mission is a loss for humanity.
If the James Webb had failed to deploy, I would have been fucking pissed. That would have been a massive loss for humanity.
A random moon probe, not so much. I’m almost happy Russia is denied the good space PR and nationalism bump.
I wonder why. Maybe they were going to sell it to China? Or maybe putting random sycophants in the position of running their space program leads to this type of political stunt.
How much data did they gather from the probe?
Just enough to prove their extreme level of incompetence in doing anything at all.
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Maybe they actually found something amazing and this is a cover story so we dont try to force them to share it.
Could be, but I assume Putin would prefer a successful mission for propaganda purposes domestically and to the rest of world.
you didn’t put the ‘/s’