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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[–] SirMechsALot@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago (11 children)

They rushed a project to compete with NASA's VIPER rover and just wanted to be first.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

They were actually always pretty good at unmanned missions. This was the same design from the 1970s.

[–] SirMechsALot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah historically we've used them a ton for collaborations in space architecture. I can't share too much but my team has worked with them, before my time, and they refused to make any advancements in certain systems. Since then collaboration has been incredibly difficult but not because of Russia's engineers.

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