[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after its engines failed to shut down correctly, the head of Russia's space agency has said.
Roscosmos director general Yury Borisov was dragged onto state TV yesterday to explain Vladimir Putin's latest failure and blamed the country's decades-long pause in lunar exploration for the mishap.
| A fair complaint. When equipment is shut down for years, there is an accumulation of dust, cobwebs, and the remains of dead insects and small rodents that has to be cleaned out before turning the thing on, lest it catastrophically gum up the works — as all the world saw. |
The pilotless Luna-25 was scheduled to land on Monday in a bid to become the first spacecraft to touch down on the south pole of the Moon, an area where scientists believe important reserves of frozen water and precious elements may exist.
But Mr Borisov said the spacecraft's engines were turned on over the weekend to put Luna-25 into a 'pre-landing orbit' but did not shut down properly, plunging the lander onto the moon.
The lunar mission was Russia's first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union. Only three countries have managed successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
|