Russia on Tuesday blamed a malfunction in an on-board management unit for inflicting its first lunar mission in 47 years to crash into the moon in August.
The state area company, Roscosmos, mentioned the management unit failed to show off the propulsion system, which blasted for one and a half occasions longer than obligatory because the craft hurtled in the direction of the moon.
Luna-25 spun uncontrolled on Aug. 19 and crashed into the moon, dashing Moscow’s hopes that it will beat India to the unexplored south pole of the moon. An Indian spacecraft landed there on Aug. 23.
The failure underscored the decline of Russia’s area energy because the glory days of Cold War competitors when Moscow was the primary to launch a satellite tv for pc to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin grew to become the primary man to journey into area in 1961.
Roscosmos mentioned it had provide you with a preliminary evaluation of the explanation Luna-25 crashed.
“When issuing a corrective pulse to transfer the spacecraft from a circular lunar orbit to an elliptical pre-landing orbit, the Luna-25 propulsion system worked for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84 seconds,” Roscosmos mentioned.
It mentioned the most certainly trigger was that an on-board management system malfunctioned within the BIUS-L angular velocity measuring unit due to incorrect knowledge instructions. As a outcome, the propulsion system was not shut down when wanted.
The Kremlin has performed down the failure of the mission, saying Russia will proceed to pursue bold plans in area.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
