During a maneuver before the Russian Luna-25 spacecraft landed, an incident occurred on Saturday, the Russian space agency Roskosmos said, adding that it was “currently analyzing the situation.”
“A pulse was sent out at 2:10 p.m. to place the probe in orbit in front of the moon,” the agency said in a statement.
“During the mission, an emergency situation arose on board the automatic (lunar) station, which did not allow the maneuver to be carried out with the given parameters,” she added.
Russia’s first lunar probe in nearly 50 years, Luna-25, was successfully launched into lunar orbit on Wednesday after launching from Russia’s far east on the night of August 10-11.
In its press release on Saturday, Roscosmos did not say whether this incident would delay the moon landing of the probe north of Bogouslavsky Crater at the south pole of the moon, which was planned for Monday.
She did not provide any further information on the circumstances of this technical problem.
Last June, Roscosmos chief Yuri Borissov admitted to President Vladimir Putin that the Luna 25 mission was “risky.”
“The probability of success of such missions is estimated at around 70 percent,” he said of the nearly 800-pound probe.
The mission is intended to give new impetus to the Russian space sector, which has been struggling for years due to financing problems and corruption scandals and is now isolated by the conflict in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has promised to continue Russia’s space program despite the sector’s difficulties, citing the USSR’s sending of the first human into space in 1961 as an example.