It appears the Luna-25 automatic lunar station has been destroyed after colliding with the Moon’s surface, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos said.
The agency recalled that the lunar probe was scheduled to receive propulsion thrust to descend into its landing trajectory on the Moon's elliptical orbit.
"At about 2:57 p.m. Decree time, the connection with the Luna-25 automatic lunar probe was lost," Roscosmos said.
The Russian space agency noted that all measures regarding the location of the spacecraft and establishing communications with it on August 19 and 20 yielded zero results, TASS reported.
It was noted that preliminary analysis results suggest that a deviation between the actual and calculated parameters of the propulsion maneuver led the Luna-25 spacecraft to enter an undesignated orbit and it ceased to exist following a collision with the surface of the Moon.
Luna-25 lunar mission
A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Luna-25 automatic lunar station blasted off from the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East at 2:10 a.m. Moscow time on August 11. On August 12 and 14, the automatic probe adjusted its flight path twice. The lunar lander was set to enter lunar orbit on August 16 and softly touch down on the Moon’s surface on August 21.
