The Luna-25 spacecraft, Russia's first attempt at a moon mission in 47 years, crashed into the moon due to technical difficulties during pre-landing orbit, highlighting the post-Soviet downfall of a once-mighty space program.

Roscosmos, Russia's official space agency, announced on Saturday at 11.57 GMT that contact had been lost due to an issue while the spacecraft was being shifted into a pre-landing orbit. On Monday, they intended to touch down gently.

“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roscosmos said. It was reported that a special interdepartmental commission had been established to look into the disappearance of the Luna-25 spacecraft. Its mission had given Moscow hope that Russia would once again be a major player in the race to the moon.

The Luna-25 spacecraft was launched on August 11 at 2:11 a.m. Moscow time from the Vostochny cosmodrome, located 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow. The failure highlighted Russia's space power's collapse since the Cold War heydays when Moscow sent Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit first in 1957 and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel to space in 1961.

It comes when Russia's $2 trillion economy faces its worst external challenge in decades, as sanctions from the West and the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II weigh heavily on the country. Since Leonid Brezhnev's Luna-24 in 1976, when Russia's Soviet-era leader commanded the Kremlin, Moscow has not undertaken a moon trip. China and the United States have more sophisticated lunar ambitions than Russia, and India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is set to touchdown near the moon's south pole this week.

A post from the Indian Space Research Organisation on X (formerly Twitter) stated that “India's Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the moon on August 23,” made around the same time the Luna crash was announced.

Despite its post-Soviet fall and the enormous expense of the Ukraine war, Russian policymakers thought the Luna-25 mission would prove Russia could compete with the superpowers in space.

“The flight control system was a vulnerable area, which had to go through many fixes,” said Anatoly Zak, creator and publisher of http://www.RussianSpaceWeb.com, which monitors Russian space programs.

Zak said that, like the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and India, Russia had attempted a moon landing before launching an orbital flight. Poor managers eager for unrealistic vanity space projects, corruption, and a reduction in the rigor of Russia's post-Soviet scientific education system have all been cited by Russian scientists as factors weakening the country's space program.

Russian space program difficulties were highlighted by the 2011 Fobos-Grunt mission disaster, intended to explore one of Mars's moons but instead crashed back to Earth in the Pacific Ocean in 2012. Russia decided on the Luna-25 mission to the moon's south pole in the early 2010s. In the end, Luna-25 was successful in leaving Earth's orbit.

However, since it was unsuccessful, Russia may not be the first to collect samples of the frozen water that scientists believe exists at the moon's south pole. It was hoped that Luna-25 would spend a year on the moon gathering soil samples and searching for water, which might be used to create rocket fuel for future missions and sustain colonies.

The long-term effects of the failed mission for the country's moon program, which plans multiple future missions, initially needed to be clarified. The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, admitted to President Vladimir Putin in person that the effort was “risky,” estimating its success odds at “around 70%,” back in June.

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