Russia’s First Moon Mission in 47 Years Fails – IOTW Report

Russia’s First Moon Mission in 47 Years Fails

Sunday, 20 August 2023, 9:00 BFH Uncategorized 22

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Russia’s first attempt to return to the moon since 1976 has ended in an explosion. The nation’s Luna-25 lander spun out of control while preparing to land and rammed into the moon’s surface, reports CNN. “The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision,” according to a statement from Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, per the AP. All of which is “quite a blow” to Russia’s space program, per Space.com. Russia had been racing to become the first country to land a rover on the moon’s challenging south pole.

The failure of the mission means India is now on track to collect that honor—its Chandrayaan-3 mission is scheduled to attempt a landing on Wednesday, per the Wall Street Journal. India is aiming to become only the fourth nation to land anywhere on the moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union, and China. The Journal notes that India’s space budget is $1.5 billion, a fraction of the US budget of $25 billion. The moon’s south pole is of particular interest to scientists because its craters may contain frozen water that could be transformed into air and rocket fuel for future space missions, per the AP. 

22 Comments on Russia’s First Moon Mission in 47 Years Fails

  2. “…and ceased to exist as a result of a collision,”

    …I love translated Russian phraseology. There always seems to be a dry humor in it.

    …but it didn’t actually cease to exist. It still exists, just not as a unified whole; and on the lunar surface it will CONTINUE to exist as a monument to the failure of its designers for a very, VERY long time…

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  9. Was it a manned? Or unmanned? Mission.
    Wouldn’t surprise me to find out (much, much, later, when the old regime dies and records are unsealed) that this was a manned mission, that cosmonauts died, and the Russians said nothing. They’ve done it before.

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  10. After all the Russians were the first ones to send a dog into space named Laika back in the early 60’s. We were more humane and only sent chimps into space first. I saw Sputnik when I was about 7 in 1960 or so on a clear starry night from outside of my grandparent’s home in Adrian, Oregon when it was the only satellite in the sky. That was pretty cool.

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  20. What about their Moon failures in the 1960’s

    They’ve never admitted them

    All the other countries that tracked those launches

    have never revealed them

    When will Russia admit their failures?

  21. I landed on the moon in 1963 when we were fighting for justice for the black selenites. They wouldn’t let the black ones piss in the “Whites Only” craters, and that was just more than we could bear. I ran into this big black selenite named Corn Dog, and he was a bad dude, let me tell you. He said, “Fuck you, earthlings, you smell bad, and you are shiftless, and lazy”.

    I said, “Fuck you, you fat-headed moon-monkey!” And I sniffed his hair.

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  22. Nobody, at least outside of NASA, knows why we haven’t been back since the early 1970’s. There are Tin Hat conspiracy theories about it. I don’t know what to think about it, but I don’t waste much time thinking about it either.

    Artemis III is scheduled for 2025, a manned lunar landing. We’ll see if it gets an inch off the ground.

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