Moscow, Oct. 27 (Prensa Latina) Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to continue supporting the country’s lunar program despite the Luna-25 mission emergency, the Kremlin press service reported today.
“We have no plans to cancel it. It’s a complex field of activity, everyone felt bad after the Luna-25 emergency, I assure you, but nothing, this is space travel, space exploration. We understand complex tasks,” said the head of state.
“Although it was negative, it was an experience that we will use in the future so that there are no mistakes. I am sure. Nobody had landed on this lunar pole, so we’ll keep trying. “The lunar program will continue,” Putin said.
The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Luna-25 automatic station was launched on August 11 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome. On August 12 and 14, the spacecraft made two trajectory corrections and on August 16, the device entered lunar orbit.
On August 19, the module performed a pre-descend thrust to form its elliptical orbit, but then communications with the spacecraft were lost. According to preliminary calculations, Luna-25 ceased to exist when it collided with the lunar surface.
The interdepartmental commission concluded that the accident at the Luna-25 automatic station was due to abnormal operation of the on-board control complex associated with the failure of the angular velocity measuring unit.
In August, the head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), Yuri Borissov, reported plans to launch the Luna 26 orbiter in 2027.
At the beginning of October, the general director of the state corporation pointed out that the launch dates of the next Russian lunar missions Luna-26 and Luna-27 could be postponed to earlier dates in order to obtain the necessary results as quickly as possible.
npg/gfa