Roskosmos reports that Luna-25, a Russian spacecraft, has crashed during its mission on the moon.

NEW DELHI: Russia’s Luna-25 space craft has crashed into the moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit, Russia’s space agency Roskosmos said on Sunday. Luna-25 was Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years.

The development comes a day after Roskosmos reported a problem in shunting Luna-25 into a pre-landing orbit. “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.

The agency had said that an “abnormal situation” occurred as mission control tried to move the craft into a pre-landing orbit at 11:10 GMT on Saturday, ahead of a planned touchdown slated for August 21.

Blow to prestige mission

Failure of the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia as a space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth ★Sputnik 1, in 1957 ★and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.

Russia has not attempted a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin. Luna-25 was supposed to execute a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on August 21.

Chandrayaan-3 to attempt landing on August 23 at 6.04pm

Russia had been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States which both have advanced lunar ambitions.

The Indian Space Research Organisation has said that Chandrayaan-3 will attempt to execute a soft landing on August 23 at 6.04pm.

(with inputs from agencies)