Posted on 08/20/2023 4:44:52 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and smashed into moon.
Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit 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,' Roskosmos said in a statement.
Moscow had earlier reported an 'abnormal situation' with the craft.
'During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters,' the agency said in a statement.
Failure for the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia's 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.
Russian sources are already blaming endemic corruption inside the agency for the failure of the mission. Putin is expected to axe top space officials over the disaster.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Root for America, instead of Russia.
Like Apollo 1, where the astronauts died before takeoff?
If you really want to get into this silliness, we can compare known astronaut and cosmonaut fatalities. America doesn’t come out so good by comparison at 4 cosmonaut deaths to 15 astronaut deaths. (And it’s even more lopsided if you include fatal training incidents.)
Gloating over another country’s misfortune with an unmanned space mission is ludicrous given our own history.
Stop embarrassing yourself with such juvenile behavior. It’s unseemly.
Space is hard…
And you know the Luna-25 mission was explicitly "Putin trying to resurrect his Soviet dreams"...how, exactly? Are you a mind reader?
America went to the moon six times. Russia never did and never will.
Only fools say “never” and predict the future with absolute certainty.
This story doesn't even involve America.
This is just you mocking Russia for a space mission failure, as though America hasn't had those before.
To be fair, a big part of going to the moon is just getting to the moon.
The Russians successfully put a craft on the moon - maybe not as elegantly as they were hoping, but they did it.
At least they probably didn’t make a unit conversion error.
The Soviet slide rule was drunk and botched the burn calculations.
I also remember Sputnik. Believe it or not, I watched from our backyard as it flew overhead, and the guy who pointed it out to us was Steven Spielberg’s father.
He was working for my father at the time at the General Electric computer division in Pheonix (which was later sold off to Honeywell). My father had him over for dinner, and I remember him telling us that Sputnik was about 2 feet in size, and that we would see it when it passed overhead at a specific time (probably about 9:30 pm).
I remember thinking that was going to be impossible since it was 100 miles up in space. But sure enough at 9:30, there it was, moving pretty fast across the sky!
I’d love to run into Steven someday and tell him that story.
NASH TRIUMPH V KOSMOSYE -
GIMN STRANYE SOVYETOV!
Our Triumph in Space -
Anthem to the Country Of Soviets!
Tell Putin to stop embarrassing himself.Physician, heal thyself.
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