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.

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[–] RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

No, I actually don't. This was never going to be scientifically meaningful. It was nothing but a vanity project that went exactly how it deserved to.

[–] rab@lemmy.ca 34 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It was set to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements

Is this false?

[–] SON_OF_SUNS@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is the russia gov reviving the 'Luna' mission name and mission type after decades coincidence when russia is heavily sanctioned by the west and in need of showing it is a industrial and scientific powerhouse? At a time it is according to its own gov 'at war with NATO', just like during the cold war?

Doing exploration & science when you go is a given, but it is disingenuous saying that Russia started this mission out of pure scientific interest. The same can of course be said of US moon or Mars programs.

The difference however is this one failed its obvious primary objective: showing that Russia = strong, and that at a time that Russia is desperate for a succes, not another example that it is a shithole.

[–] kattenluik@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago

There's a lot of reasons, including passing on knowledge from the people who did Luna 24.

I'm also pretty sure Luna 25 has been worked on since at least 2017, not to mention that Luna just means moon.

[–] ours@lemmy.film 17 points 1 year ago

I doubt it since India has a mission right now to do the same thing.

[–] Perfide@reddthat.com 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's not false, but from Russia it's worthless. China and India have actually competent missions to the same region planned, and the US's Artemis 3 crewed mission is also planning to land in that region by 2026. This was absolutely an incompetent rush job attempt to beat everybody else to the punch in the name of "Russian Superiority".

[–] Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

They also had announced that they wouldn’t be sharing any of the scientific data gathered

[–] RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Coming from the Russian government, who cares? They're so incompentent and dishonest that none of their results could be trusted.

[–] bitsplease@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It's not, but they already said they weren't going to share any results with the international community, so nothing of scientific value was lost anyways

[–] SterlingVapor@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

There's nothing vain about looking for rocket fuel outside the gravity well, the only question is "why now?"