Russia on Saturday reported an “abnormal situation” on its Luna-25 spacecraft, which was launched earlier this month.
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said the spacecraft encountered unspecified problems while trying to enter orbit before landing around the moon, and specialists are analyzing the situation.
“During the operation, an abnormal situation arose on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed according to the established parameters,” Roskosmos said in a telegram.
Roscosmos did not say whether the accident would prevent Luna-25 from landing.
The spacecraft is expected to touch down at the moon’s south pole on Monday, rushing to land on Earth’s moon ahead of an Indian spacecraft.
The moon’s south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe that the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. Future explorers could turn water frozen in rocks into air and fuel for rockets.
Also on Saturday, the Russian spacecraft released its first results. Roscosmos said that the preliminary data obtained, which is still being analyzed, contains information about the chemical elements of the lunar soil and that its equipment recorded a “small meteorite impact”.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos has released images of Zeeman Crater – the third largest crater in the Moon’s southern hemisphere – taken from the spacecraft. The crater is 190 kilometers in diameter and eight kilometers deep.
The launch of the Luna-25 spacecraft on Aug. 10 from Russia’s Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East was Russia’s first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union.
The Russian lunar lander was expected to reach the moon between August 21 and 23, around the same time as the launch of the Indian rover on July 14.
Only three governments have had successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. India and Russia aspire to be the first two countries to land on the south pole of the moon.
Roskosmos said it wanted to show that Russia is “a country capable of delivering payloads to the Moon” and “ensure Russia’s guaranteed access to the lunar surface”.
Sanctions imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine make it difficult for the country to access Western technology, which has an impact on its space program.
Analysts say the Luna-25 was originally intended to carry a small lunar rover, but that idea was scrapped to reduce the rover’s weight for better reliability.
The spaceport is a pet project of Russian President Vladimir Putin and key to his efforts to make Russia a superpower in space and to moving Russian launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to Kazakhstan.
A previous Indian attempt to land at the lunar south pole in 2019 ended when the rover crashed into the lunar surface.
