Posted on 08/20/2023 7:48:18 AM PDT by bitt
Russia’s first lunar mission in nearly half a century came to a violent end when its unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after encountering a problem when it began preparing for pre-landing orbit.
Russian officials had hoped the prestige mission would show they can still compete in space despite their post-Soviet decline and the extreme loss suffered in the Ukraine war.
Its failure highlighted the intense decline of Russia’s authority over space since the days of the Cold War, when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite — Sputnik 1 — to orbit the Earth.
The Luna-25 mission, launched Aug 11, was Russia’s first attempt at sending a spacecraft to the moon since Luna-24 in 1976.
Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, lost contact with the spacecraft at 11:57 GMT Saturday as the ship began experiencing issues while beginning for pre-landing orbit, the agency said.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roskosmos said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Competing in the Crashed & Burned category, too bad.
If it was easy Niger would be doing it.
Today, in 2023.... I have my doubts about anything I see in the news. I suspect people lying. It really has come to be a sad matter of affairs we constantly question what is being told. I blame the BEST of the liars, the New York Times.
They're kind of distracted in Ukraine right now.
Why can’t these writers use the word crash?
Which was the one 45 years ago?
So, you think Tussia successfully landed on the moon?
It really has come to be a sad matter of affairs we constantly question what is being told.
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Always question what you are told. Trust is earned, not given. Discover the facts for yourself.
First defeated by Ukraine. Now defeated by the Moon.
Just like Luna 15 in July 1969. I believe there was something else happening on the moon at that time. 😏
The folks who used to say “Question Everything”, are now the ones putting folks in jail for questioning them.
For a first try in 47 years, it made it to the moon. Its a success that it didn’t blow-up upon launch.
This is totally normal in the process of space exploration. Look at the failures of the Atlas program.
More recently, Space-X’s first rocket was the Falcon 1. Its first three launches were failures, followed by two successes. Then Falcon 9 became the workhorse rocket for a decade, with just two failures in 232 launches, for very high success rate of 99 percent
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is behind Space-X in commercial development, but they are similar.
The Russians realize they need to get their @sses in gear, because its once again obvious - free-market development and competition in the USA is pushing space-launch technology and scale in ways they and China simply can not compete with.
The folks who used to say “Question Everything”, are now the ones putting folks in jail for questioning them.
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Folks? Who cares? Question Everything just common sense, not some political act.
They'll have to dismantle Putinism.
I think the U.S. will eventually become less capitalist under Biden Administration (and his successor Gavin Newsom). So we may lose our lead in space.
It will just be replaced with another "ism". Russians loves them some "isms".
How convenient
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