The Moon, unprovoked, collided with the Russian vessel that was approaching amicably.
An old, whitened but still recognizable USA flag was planted on the Moon's surface, indicating this as a clear act of aggression from the imperialist power
Glad it was unmanned. There's enough senseless death in the world.
If you take a look at the lunar missions for space race, you'll see many of them happened within a year of each other. It's a wonder there weren't more failures!
Compare that to today, where it took almost 20 years of planning for the Hubble telescope to come into fruition.
You shouldn't rush things in space. This is just the latest reminder.
Don't you think that the fact that the mission was unmanned meant that they knew that they're not ready for manned ones yet? So nobody was rushing, as you put it.
Crewed vs uncrewed is a decision made at the very beginning of the planning stages, years ago. These days a crew is just a gigantic extra expense on a mission with little return. Remotely operated missions can achieve all their scientific objectives.
Manned lunar lander is a mich complex piece of technology which needs to be developed from scratch. It also needs a much more powerful rocket which Russia don't have either. It's at least a decade of extra R&D time even if they get all the funding they need and magically get rid of corruption (which obviously won't happen).
It's unmanned not because they chose it but because they are literally incapable of making a manned mission (at the very least for a couple of generations).
It's not that deep, it's Russia and the Russians are fascist morons to the very core of their society, riven through from fsb to science, always have been, always will be
A couple years back, Putin promised to put a Russian on the moon. A good question is "with what rocket?"
Turns out, an even better question is "with what communications system?" A factor in this crash is that they lack a round-the-world comm system. They can only communicate when the moon is visible over Russia. It's a big country, of course, but not big enough for 24/7 communication.
Probably Yenisei which unfortunately had its development paused.
A factor in this crash is that they lack a round-the-world comm system.
They've had this with GLONASS for over a decade. For far-side communications, you need a single relay satellite like what China used for Chang’e-4. However, you don't actually need either of those for many lunar missions. When the Americans sent humans to the moon, they just used radio waves that were picked up from various ground stations across the world.
GLONASS is a GPS navigation system, not a communication system. And the problem is not communicating with places on Earth, the problem is the lack of systems capable of communicating with the Moon.
The lander made a planned flight to the moon, which included a high acceleration parking maneuver which resulted in unquestionable sucesss! To the Mun!
Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control, officials say.
The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on Monday to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.
Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation, said on Sunday morning that it had lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after 14:57pm (11:57 GMT) on Saturday.
"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon," it said in a statement.
Russia has been racing to the Moon's south pole against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on there next week.
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The russians are actually pretty good at space.. although a lot of that was due to koralev inventing most of what they use.. soyuz has been extremely successful. So I have no doubt they can get to the moon.. hopefully next time at a speed that doesn't pancake the ship..