Russia’s Lunar Lander Crashes Into the Moon
The robotic Luna-25 spacecraft appeared to have “ceased its existence” after a failed orbital adjustment, the space agency Roscosmos said.
By Kenneth Chang, Alina Lobzina and Anton Troianovski
A Russian robotic spacecraft that was headed to the lunar surface has crashed into the moon, Russia’s space agency said on Sunday, citing the results of a preliminary investigation a day after it lost contact with the vehicle.
It is the latest setback in spaceflight for a country that during the Cold War became the first nation, as the Soviet Union, to put a satellite, a man and then a woman in orbit.
The Luna-25 lander, Russia’s first space launch to the moon’s surface since the 1970s, entered lunar orbit last Wednesday and was supposed to land as early as Monday. At 2:10 p.m. on Saturday afternoon Moscow time, according to Roscosmos, the state corporation that oversees Russia’s space activities, the spacecraft fired its engine to enter an orbit that would set it up for a lunar landing. But an unexplained “emergency situation” occurred.
On Sunday, Roscosmos said that it had lost contact with the spacecraft 47 minutes after the start of the engine firing. Attempts to re-establish communications failed, and Luna-25 had deviated from its planned orbit and “ceased its existence as a result of a collision with the lunar surface,” Roscosmos said.
An interagency commission would be formed to investigate the reasons for the failure, it added.
Luna-25, which launched on Aug. 11, was aiming to be the first mission to reach the moon’s south polar region. Government space programs and private companies all over Earth are interested in that part of the moon because they believe it may contain water ice that could be used by astronauts in the future.
The main purpose of Luna-25 was to test technology for landing on the moon, and the loss of the lander during a less risky phase of the mission will add scrutiny to Russia’s space struggles.
For missions headed to the moon’s surface, the two most nerve-racking moments are the rocket launch from Earth and the landing itself. Three lunar landing attempts in the past four years — by India, an Israeli nonprofit and a Japanese company — all successfully maneuvered in orbit around the moon before failing during the last few minutes descending to the surface.
When missions are lost during orbital engine firings, the cause often turns out to be shoddy manufacturing and inadequate testing. Those shortcomings were the basis for the failure of Russia’s last major robotic interplanetary probe, Phobos-Grunt, in 2011. Another factor could be embarrassing human error, like when NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere in 1999 because of a mix-up between metric and imperial units.
Natan Eismont, a senior scientist of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which led the scientific operations of Luna-25, said the spacecraft’s engine had not performed as designed during burns to adjust the spacecraft’s course.
“What I can say, and it was noticed by outside observers, that the correction somewhat deviated from what has been stated,” said Dr. Eismont, who said he was not directly involved with the mission.
This mission controllers “managed to cope with it successfully until the last maneuver,” Dr. Eismont said. But the last burn, to move Luna-25 to an orbit ahead of landing that passed within 11 miles of the surface, required a big push that did not go as planned. “Most likely the braking thrust was either too strong or it was in a wrong direction.”
Dr. Eismont suggested perhaps the mission managers should have taken more time.
“It’s up to the immediate participants to make these decisions” of proceeding toward landing or remaining in the circular orbit for further troubleshooting, he said. “They made their decision, and whether it was the correct decision, let a commission decide.”
The mission’s failure may be a blow to President Vladimir V. Putin, who has used Russian achievements in space as part and parcel of his hold on power.
That is part of the Kremlin’s narrative — a compelling one for many Russians — that Russia is a great nation held back by an American-led West that is jealous of and threatened by Russia’s capabilities. The country’s state-run space industry in particular has been a valuable tool as Russia works to remake its geopolitical relationships.
“The interest in our proposals is very high,” the head of Russia’s space program, Yuri Borisov, told Mr. Putin in a televised meeting in June, describing Russia’s plan to expand space cooperation with African countries. The initiative is part of the Kremlin’s overall efforts to deepen economic and political ties with non-Western countries amid European and American sanctions.
However, coverage of the Luna-25 mission had been muted, and remained that way after the spacecraft’s apparent crash.
The 6 p.m. newscast on Sunday night on state-run Channel 1, for instance, devoted only 40 seconds to Luna-25’s premature conclusion.
“By all appearances, the Luna-25 mission has ended,” the Channel 1 anchor said, before appending a positive note: “Scientists got invaluable information about the surface of the moon, among other things.”
The vaguely optimistic tone was echoed by Anatoly Petrukovich, also of the Space Research Institute which led Luna-25’s scientific operations.
“We are working on them,” Dr. Petrukovich said to the state-run Tass news agency, referring to upcoming lunar missions, “and hope that this work won’t be slowed down but accelerated.”
In recent decades, Russia’s exploration of Earth’s solar system has fallen a long way from the heights of the Soviet era.
The last unqualified success was more than 35 years ago, when the Soviet Union was still intact. A pair of twin spacecraft, Vega 1 and Vega 2, launched six days apart. Six months later, the two spacecraft flew past Venus, each dropping a capsule that contained a lander that successfully set down on the hellish planet’s surface, as well as a balloon that, when released, floated through the atmosphere. In March 1986, the two spacecraft then passed within about 5,000 miles of Halley’s comet, taking pictures and studying the dust and gas from the comet’s nucleus.
Subsequent missions to Mars that launched in 1988 and 1996 failed.
The embarrassing nadir came in 2011 with Phobos-Grunt, which was supposed to land on Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two moons, and bring back samples of rock and dirt to Earth. But Phobos-Grunt never made it out of Earth’s orbit. A few months later, it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere.
An investigation later revealed that Russia’s financially strapped space agency had skimped on manufacturing and testing, using electronics components that had not been proven to survive the cold and radiation of space.
Otherwise, Russia has been confined to low-Earth orbit, including carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station, which it jointly manages with NASA.
Luna-25 was to have completed a one-year mission studying the composition of the lunar surface. It was also supposed to demonstrate technologies that would have been used in a series of robotic missions that Russia and lay the groundwork for a future lunar base that it is planning to build with China.
But the schedule for those missions — Luna 26, 27 and 28 — has already slipped years from the original timetable, and now there are likely to be further delays, especially as the Russian space program struggles, financially and technologically, because of sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Roscosmos will face a difficult decision of whether to redo the Luna-25 mission or leave the landing technology untested for now and move on to more ambitious follow-on missions. If Russia decides to re-fly Luna-25, that will likely add even more years of delay.
Although NASA and the European Space Agency continue to cooperate with Russia on the I.S.S., other joint space projects ended after the invasion of Ukraine. For the lunar missions, that means Russia needs to replace key components that were to come from Europe.
Russia has struggled to develop new space hardware, especially electronics that reliably work in the harsh conditions of outer space.
“You cannot really fly in space, or, at least, fly in space for a long time, without better electronics,” said Anatoly Zak, who publishes RussianSpaceWeb.com, which tracks Russia’s space activities. “The Soviet electronics were always backwards. They were always behind the West in this area of science and technology.”
He added: “The entire Russian space program is actually affected by this issue.”
Other ambitious Russian space plans are also behind schedule and will likely take much longer than the official pronouncements to complete.
Angara, a family of rockets that has been in development for two decades, has only launched six times.
A few days ago, Vladimir Kozhevnikov, the chief designer for Russia’s next space station, told the Interfax news agency that Oryol, a modern replacement for the venerable Soyuz capsule, would make its maiden flight in 2028.
Back in 2020, Dmitry Rogozin, then the head of Roscosmos, said that the maiden flight of Oryol would take place in 2023 — meaning that, in just three years, the launch date has slipped five years.
Another country, India, will now get the chance to land the first probe in the lunar south pole’s vicinity. Its Chandrayaan-3 mission launched in July, but it opted for a more roundabout but fuel-efficient route to the moon. It is scheduled to attempt a landing on Wednesday.
“It’s unfortunate,” Sudheer Kumar, a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organization, said about the Russian lander’s crash. “Every space mission is very risky and highly technical.”
Hari Kumar contributed reporting from Delhi.
Kenneth Chang has been at The Times since 2000, writing about physics, geology, chemistry, and the planets. Before becoming a science writer, he was a graduate student whose research involved the control of chaos. More about Kenneth Chang
Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. He was previously Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post and spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and New York. More about Anton Troianovski
New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s misadventures with his digital camera, Twitter account, and boxers have given us yet another “-gate”— Weinergate. But Weiner’s not the first male figure in power to make some display of his nether regions in a confusion of sexual and political power. Long before tweeting and sexting, kings secular (and sacred) made a point with their genitalia that contributed to a tradition that Weiner’s just the latest, strangest, and saddest to join.
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New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s misadventures with his digital camera, Twitter account, and boxers have given us yet another “-gate”— Weinergate. But Weiner’s not the first male figure in power to make some display of his nether regions in a confusion of sexual and political power. Long before tweeting and sexting, kings secular (and sacred) made a point with their genitalia that contributed to a tradition that Weiner’s just the latest, strangest, and saddest to join.
When I first heard of Weiner’s bulging underwear picture, I flashed back to Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Henry VIII from 1536. Holbein’s painting fell victim to fire in 1698, but enough copies remain to give a sense of the original. Henry VIII distributed copies to friends and visiting dignitaries, hoping that this idealized portrait would linger in their minds longer than the impression his failing health may have left in person. In the full length portrait, Henry proudly stands with hands on hips and his (insufficiently depicted) weight balanced on his widely spread legs. At the center of the image, however, is the star of the show—the bulging codpiece that Anne Boleyn lost her head figuratively over a few years before and lost her head over literally just earlier that year (detail shown). With Jane Seymour and the promise of male issue (which would turn out to be the future Edward VI) waiting in the wings, Henry desperately needed to assert his sexual power and the role that sexuality played in maintaining the Tudor dynasty. Holbein knew this and gave proper prominence to the codpiece, and even added a phallic dagger in Henry’s left hand just in case you missed the point.
Years later, Anthony Van Dyck became court painter to one of Henry VIII’s successors, Charles I of England. Van Dyck’s portraits aren’t as “front and center” as Holbein’s Henrys, but they do compensate and overcompensate in a different way. The diminutive ruler needed to be larger than life, so Van Dyck obliged in works such as 1633’s Charles I with M. de St. Antoine. To hide Charles’ vertical challenge, Van Dyck placed him on a horse. The raging stallion between Charles’ legs, however, did more than add to the king’s stature, of course. That white horse became Charles’ bulging codpiece, the oversized symbol of his sexual and political power. Then, as now, male political figures knew that size matters.
But even the King of Kings drew visual power from His manhood. As the late Leo Steinberg’s 1983 book, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, argued, many images of Jesus Christ as an infant emphasized his genitalia. No genitalia, no humanity—or so the visual argument went. Just to hammer the idea home, other figures in the paintings often would point a helpful finger in the direction of the young savior’s bulge. Steinberg supported his argument with an almost embarrassing trove of visual proof.
Secular kings claimed divine right as the source of their power, so it seems natural that they would follow the same manifestations of that power as a divine figure such as Jesus. If proto-sexting was good enough for Jesus to prove his manhood, then it was good enough for Henry, Charles, and all the others. Today, self-proclaimed “kings” in their fields such as Weiner and Brett Favre flaunt their pornographic codpiece equivalents electronically. Holbein, Van Dyck, and other artists took an earthy argument and softened the crude edges. Sadly, Weinergate and Favregate argue only for men with poor judgment not to get Twitter accounts if that poor judgment already involves what’s inside their pants.
[Image:Hans Holbein the Younger. Portrait of Henry VIII (detail). 1536.]
Driver plows into at least 7 pedestrians at Midtown crosswalk
A vehicle plowed through seven pedestrians at a Midtown Manhattan crosswalk late Sunday night, leaving at least one critically injured, according to police and law enforcement sources.
The driver behind the wheel of a Honda Accord hit the seven victims around 11:55 p.m. at West 36th Street and 6th Avenue as the suspect kept driving to the Midtown tunnel toward Queens, sources said.
Five pedestrians were rushed to Bellevue Hospital with at least one person in critical condition, sources said.
The driver of the Honda Accord crashed the vehicle in Queens after fleeing the accident in Manhattan. Juan Gonzale/NY Post 
