Aug 19 (Reuters) – An “abnormal situation” occurred on Saturday on Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft as it prepared to move into its pre-landing orbit, the national space agency Roskosmos reported.
The Russian spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole on Monday.
“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be carried out with the specified parameters,” Roskosmos said in a brief statement, adding that the specialists are analyzing the situation, without giving further information. details.
Earlier on Saturday, Roskosmos said it had received the first results from the Luna-25 mission and they were being analysed.
The agency also released images of the Moon’s Zeeman crater taken from the spacecraft. The crater is the third deepest in the southern hemisphere of the Moon, at 190 km in diameter and 8 km deep.
Roskosmos stated that the data received so far had provided information on the chemical elements of the lunar soil and would also facilitate the operation of devices designed to study the near surface of the Moon. He added that his teams had recorded “the impact of a micrometeorite.”
Luna-25 entered lunar orbit on Wednesday, the first Russian spacecraft to do so since 1976.
Its goal will be to operate for a year at the South Pole, where scientists from NASA and other space agencies have detected traces of frozen water in craters in recent years.
The presence of water has implications for the great space powers, since it could allow longer human stays on the Moon that would make possible the extraction of lunar resources. (Written by Gareth Jones. Edited in Spanish by Javier Leira)
Source: Ambito
