If I were a superstitious man, I would advise you to be careful what you call your space missions.
When Russia named its first mission to the Moon in 47 years, it was originally given the designation
“Luna-Glob” [Луна-Глоб], translating in English to “Lunar Sphere”. However, this name troubled
the scientific director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Lev Zeleny. “Glob” [Глоб] was too similar to a different Russian word, “Grob” [гроб] – meaning
“coffin”. Zeleny changed the name of the mission to Luna-25, intending to call back
to the earlier Soviet Luna missions, which were the last time Russian spacecraft successfully
landed on the Moon. But perhaps it was too late, and something of that original name lingered.
Because we now know that “Lunar Coffin” was a much more apt name for the ill-omened Luna 25.
I’m Alex McColgan, and you’re watching Astrum. Join us today
as we explore the fate of Russia’s first Moon mission since 1976. For
the country that once led the world in the space race, what exactly went wrong?
Although we often look at NASA or ESA missions here at Astrum, Russia’s space
program has historically also been quite the powerhouse. Back when Russia was part of the USSR,
it was the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik 1 – the first artificial satellite – that triggered
the space race in 1957, and for a time the Soviet Space Program went from strength to strength. It
was the Soviet Union that put the first man into space, and the first woman. The first multi-person
crew. The first dog. Their rockets escaped the Earth-Moon system first, impacted the Moon first,
orbited the Moon first, took photos of the far side of the Moon first. Soviet Cosmonauts did
the first spacewalk. The USSR launched the first space station. To the eyes of many,
and to the pleasure of Soviet leadership, the USSR was winning the space race.
But beneath the surface, not everything was going as smoothly as it appeared. The Soviet
Union also saw the first death during a space mission, when the re-entry capsule’s parachute
of Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov failed to open on his re-entry to Earth. The only 3 men to have
died in space were a crew of Soviet cosmonauts, visiting that first-ever space station. Soviet
launches were plagued with failures, but – eager to look good in the eyes of the world,
particularly compared to its rival the US – the USSR simply didn’t report any of its
failed Lunar missions. It pretended any rocket that didn’t make it out of the atmosphere was
never intended to be a Moon mission at all. In reality, only about 34% of Soviet Moon missions
ended in success, in comparison to America’s 60% success rate on equivalent missions.
America landed the first man on the Moon in 1969, and after that crowning achievement, both
superpowers seemed to lose interest in continuing the race, refocusing their space programs towards
non-lunar pursuits by the mid-1970s. Soviet cosmonauts never set foot on the Moon itself. The
USSR cancelled any of its plans to do so, as the endeavour was ultimately seen as too expensive.
Perhaps more importantly, what was the point of going if you were only going to get there second?
But with the turn of the millennium, and since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991,
the world’s interest in going to the Moon has been rekindled. Scientists realised that the Moon
would make a good stepping stone for a human space mission to Mars, due to its plentiful
resources - such as newly discovered water-ice, ideal for rocket fuel, air and water - and low
gravity. Resources on the Moon began to attract the attention of businesses for economic reasons,
and nations began to consider setting up permanent bases on its surface, as a way of turning a
profit. And of course, there is still a lot of science to be done there, attracting those who
wish to learn more about the processes by which the Moon formed, and the cycles that govern it.
Russia’s old rival, the USA, rose started began to dust off their space programs. America started
its Constellation Program in 2005, declaring their aim to go back to the Moon. But now other nations
were getting in on the act too. India, who had not been part of the first race for the Moon,
began its Chandrayaan programme for Lunar exploration in 2000. Governments across the
world believed that the benefits of going to the Moon in this second rush were so great,
nations who didn’t go would in some way fall behind. In the words of ISRO Chairman Krishnaswamy
Kasturirangan, “It is not whether we can afford it. It is whether we can afford to ignore it.”
Russia didn’t intend to be left behind; it was eager to pick up the Soviet legacy of
space exploration. And in fact, it beat its competitors to the punch. Russia
had already begun thinking about a new Lunar mission as early as the mid-1990’s,
when Russian scientists Mikhail Marov and Erik Galimov put forward their proposal to Roscosmos,
Russia’s newly restructured space agency. Their Luna-Glob mission was approved and was
initially intended to have a lot more parts to it, including a penetrator for seismic sounding,
a lander and an orbiter. However, the project initially did not have enough political will
behind it. It faced budget cuts after the Russian financial crisis of 1998,
when the rouble lost over two-thirds of its value in three weeks, and was mired in delays
that repeatedly knocked it back and put it on hold. The penetrator and orbiter were scrapped,
leaving just the lander, as the plan for the mission was reimagined to make it more economical.
Russia wanted to be a nationally recognised player in the space game, but didn’t want
to spend massive amounts of its budget on the plan. In 2005, Russia only invested 20 billion
roubles (about 0.7 billion USD) in its space industry, compared to the USA’s $15.6 billion.
One way to work around this was to collaborate with other nations. Russia initially tried to
work with India on the Chandrayaan 2 mission in 2007. Luna-25 would fly with India’s orbiter,
and be the mission’s lander. However, this low spending ultimately punished them,
and Russian scientists were unable to get the lander’s technology working in time for the
initial 2013 launch date. India eventually abandoned the collaboration, and completed
Chandrayaan 2 on their own. Russia was left trying to get Luna-25 to the Moon’s surface solo.
India’s Chandrayaan 2 lander crashed into the moon, but India was eager to try again
with Chandrayaan 3. This set Russia and India on a course from collaborators to
competitors. Both Russia and India were interested in the Moon’s South pole,
where Chandrayaan-2 and others had confirmed through spectrometry the presence of water
ice. Luna-25 and Chandrayaan-3 were now racing to be the first lander to
successfully touch down on the Moon’s south pole, and potentially discover that water-icefirst hand.
However, Russia faced a new problem: the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Western
countries were outraged at Russia’s decision to attack its neighbour,
and came together to impose massive sanctions. Not only was this painful economically,
but one vital element of these sanctions was a ban on the trade of high-end computer chips
and components. These would prevent Russia from developing high-precision ballistic rockets for
use in its military, but hit Russia’s Lunar goals too. European scientists began ending
their collaborations with Roscosmos. In an interconnected world where Russia traded
for much of its high-end components, Russia would now have to go it alone.
India completed Chandrayaan-3 and launched it on the 14th of July 2023,
a mission we covered in greater detail in a previous video. However, the route that they
took to the Moon was a fuel-efficient but time-inefficient one. It would take over a
month to actually arrive on the Moon’s surface; India estimated a touch-down date of the 23rd
of August. If Russia really hurried, it could complete its lander and arrive before India by
taking a shorter, more fuel-intensive route using Russia’s powerful Soyuz 2.1b rocket.
The Luna-25 mission had by this time been delayed from 2021, to 2022,
and then to 2023. In a bad stroke of luck for Russia, its BIB navigation
sensor didn’t pass quality tests. This was problematic as the BIB sensor relied on a
computer chip normally supplied from the West – a chip that Russia could no longer purchase,
due to Western sanctions. So Russian scientists had to develop a new one on their own, the Bius-L.
Luna 25 was cleared as ready to launch on the 11th of August 2023. It had 8 Russian scientific
instruments on board, including laser mass spectrometers, infra-red spectrometers, cameras
for imaging the lunar surface, and even a device for measuring dust and micrometeors. Luna-25
would operate on the Moon’s surface for a whole year, enduring the freezing cold of lunar nights
and the intense solar radiation of lunar days. It had the potential to do some good science.
The Soyuz rocket was powerful enough that it would get Luna-25 to the Moon’s surface by
August 21st – 2 crucial days before India’s lander arrived. Russia would indeed win the race against
its rival. Luna-25 launched successfully from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on the 11th of August 2023,
and entered the Moon’s orbit on August 16th. It took photographs of the Moon’s surface, imaging
the Zeeman crater. All systems were functioning normally, and communications were good.
Russian scientists then began to make final preparations for
the landing itself. The South Pole of the Moon is home to some treacherous terrain,
and the scientists didn’t want a rough touch-down, which could potentially harm Luna-25.
But then something went wrong. On August 19th, Luna-25 lost communications with Earth.
No longer guided remotely, Luna-25 attempted to perform its own pre-planned manoeuvre that would
take it from a circular orbit around the Moon into the new path down towards the surface. However,
further failures occurred. The Bius-L navigation device – the one developed by Russian scientists
after the previous one hadn’t passed quality control tests – sent bad information to the
ship’s onboard control unit. As a result, the thrusters fired for 127 seconds instead of the
intended 84 seconds, pointing Luna-25 into a steeper and steeper descent. On the 20th
of August, Luna-25 careened down towards the Moon’s surface at a pace too fast to stop.
Roscosmos scientists could do nothing but look on in horror as the lander hurtled into the terrain,
travelling faster and faster. Although no external cameras witnessed the impact,
it’s easy to imagine the grim result of acceleration under gravity that turned Luna-25
back into a Lunar coffin. Its Lunar mission had not lasted a year, but only a few days.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter did a flyby later, taking an image of the site of the craft’s
final resting place. Luna-25 had impacted hard, creating a crater about 10 metres in diameter.
Russia had attempted to show the world that it was still a great power when it came to space
exploration. However, Luna-25 had been mired by pressures and challenges. Western sanctions
had indirectly sabotaged it – the Russian replacement chip was not precise enough,
or was not hardy enough to survive the high-radiation environment of space. However,
Russia’s attempt to beat its rival India had also created problems for itself. When I learned about
its arrival date being 2 days before India, it reminded me of a similar time when the Soviet
Union’s Luna-15 mission crashed into the Moon only a few hundred miles and on the same day
as Apollo 11 landed. Luna-15 had been tasked with collecting Moon rocks, the same as the Astronauts
of Apollo 11. And although it was unmanned, if America’s mission had failed, it would have
been a point of pride to the Soviet Union that Luna-15 had managed to steal America’s thunder.
This was political point-scoring. The Soviet Union didn’t want to just get to the Moon. It wanted
to get there first. And inevitably when you’re racing to beat someone else, you take less time
making sure everything works as well as it needs to. And so, you run a greater risk of failure.
Ultimately, just like with Luna-15, Russia’s Luna-25 had the opposite effect that its
country’s leadership intended. Rather than show Russia’s superiority in space exploration,
it showed the downsides of isolationism and rivalry over collaboration. If Russia still
was working with institutions like ESA, and shared in technological advances, perhaps it
would be boasting a success right now. In many respects, it is a tragedy.
Perhaps this can one day change. The future of mankind seems pointed towards the stars. If we
are to thrive out there, it will be because we as a world work together. The tragic fate of
the Luna-25 mission can be a learning experience, not just an embarrassing footnote in history – but
only if the right lessons are drawn from it. Pride is not always a good thing. Rivalry can
leave us isolated when we don’t need to be, and can prevent us from thinking things through.
Although it’s unlikely, it would certainly be nice if our efforts to prove our superiority
to each other could finally be put to rest – buried in a frozen coffin on the lunar sphere.
If you’ve enjoyed listening to the soothing tone of my voice in this video,
and thought it would be exactly the kind of relaxing sound you needed to fall asleep to,
you’re not alone. I've seen many comments about this at the end of my videos, so I
decided to give you what you wanted, in an even more relaxing format. So started the Astrum Sleep
Space podcast. These are previous Astrum episodes that have been reformatted for a slower-paced,
chilled experience – one that would be perfect to fall asleep to. Because, why not learn and
ponder about the universe calmly as you drift off? I publish the episodes on these platforms;
the links for each are in the description and pinned comment. I’d be really grateful if you
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with the algorithm on the respective platforms. Thousands of you have enjoyed them already,
so click on the link and listen to my latest episode. I’ll see you over there!