Roscosmos

The Progress MS-24 cargo spacecraft blasting off (Image NASA TV)

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A few hours ago, the Progress MS-24 spacecraft blasted off atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After about nine minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and was placed on its route. The cargo spacecraft began its resupply mission to the International Space Station also called Progress 85 or 85P. In this mission, the route used is the one that requires about two days.

Photo of the Moon surface taken by the Luna 25 lander (Photo courtesy Roscosmos)

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The Russian space agency Roscosmos has confirmed that its Luna 25 lander crashed on the Moon following an anomaly in one of the maneuvers that was supposed to lead to its Moon landing on Monday. The problems began on Saturday, when there was the problem and communications were lost. An examination of the telemetry data received up to that point led to the conclusion that the impulse was excessive, leading to a trajectory that caused a crash. Yet another problem in the Russian space program will bring consequences yet to be assessed in the Luna-Glob program which is based on increasingly ambitious missions for the next few years and had already accumulated years of delay.

The Luna 25 lander blasting off atop a Soyuz-2.1b (Image courtesy Roscosmos)

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A few hours ago, the Luna 25 lander blasted off atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Russian Vostochny Cosmodrome. After about an hour, the Fregat-M last stage pushed the vehicle to leave Earth orbit, performing the maneuver called in jargon TLI (Tras Lunar Injection) which will take it towards the Moon, where it will land near the south pole, near the Boguslavsky crater.

The Luna 25 mission is the first of the Luna-Glob program, which began in the 1990s with the ambition to reprise the Soviet Luna program and develop it in a way that wasn’t possible in the 1970s. For this reason, the name is Luna 25, considering it the follow-up mission to the 1976 Luna 24.

The Progress MS-23 cargo spacecraft approaching the International Space Station (Image NASA TV)

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A few hours ago, the Progress MS-23 spacecraft blasted off atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After about nine minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and was placed on its ultra-fast track in its resupply mission to the International Space Station also called Progress 84 or 84P. After almost 3.5 hours it reached the International Space Station docking with its Poisk module. The ultra-fast track requires very precise maneuvering and a favorable position of the Station. For this reason, it wasn’t used in the previous two Russian resupply missions.

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft departing the International Space Station (Image NASA TV)

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A little while ago, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan after departing the International Space Station almost two hours earlier. Generally, the staff arrives shortly after to assist the crew who have just returned from the Station but in this case, there’s no one on board due to the problems encountered in December 2022 with the cooling system, which made the journey unsafe for the humans.