Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning into an uncontrolled orbit, officials say.

The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, but failed after encountering issues as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.

It was Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years.

The spacecraft was scheduled to land on Monday to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.

Roskosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, said it lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after running into difficulties.

  • DrownedRats@lemmy.world
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    Normally, I’d say that it’s a great shame that a piece of valuable scientific equipment was lost and that it’s a massive loss to humanity as a whole as the international scientific community is usually able to co-operate regardless of boarders.

    But this time, Russia said they won’t be sharing any data gathered from this probe with the international community and would be keeping it all to themselves so suddenly I don’t give a shit.

    • mindlight@lemm.ee
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      I agree but I’m also happy that Putin doesn’t get a win by presenting this as “Russia is great and all because of me”.

      • uis@lemmy.world
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        Reminds me state TV propoganda “no Putin - no Russia”.

        Technically he won, otherwise it was vicroty of science over Putin’s corruption.

    • Kokesh@lemmy.world
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      I’m huge space nerd, but I personally wouldn’t say that loss of space mission is a loss for humanity.

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        If the James Webb had failed to deploy, I would have been fucking pissed. That would have been a massive loss for humanity.

        A random moon probe, not so much. I’m almost happy Russia is denied the good space PR and nationalism bump.

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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      Maybe they actually found something amazing and this is a cover story so we dont try to force them to share it.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      I wonder why. Maybe they were going to sell it to China? Or maybe putting random sycophants in the position of running their space program leads to this type of political stunt.

  • Jay@lemmy.ca
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    Well, they actually hit what they were aiming for at least.

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    Fuck the Russian government, but you still hate to see something like this happen.

    • RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works
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      No, I actually don’t. This was never going to be scientifically meaningful. It was nothing but a vanity project that went exactly how it deserved to.

      • rab@lemmy.ca
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        It was set to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements

        Is this false?

        • SON_OF_SUNS@lemmy.world
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          Is the russia gov reviving the ‘Luna’ mission name and mission type after decades coincidence when russia is heavily sanctioned by the west and in need of showing it is a industrial and scientific powerhouse? At a time it is according to its own gov ‘at war with NATO’, just like during the cold war?

          Doing exploration & science when you go is a given, but it is disingenuous saying that Russia started this mission out of pure scientific interest. The same can of course be said of US moon or Mars programs.

          The difference however is this one failed its obvious primary objective: showing that Russia = strong, and that at a time that Russia is desperate for a succes, not another example that it is a shithole.

          • kattenluik@feddit.nl
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            There’s a lot of reasons, including passing on knowledge from the people who did Luna 24.

            I’m also pretty sure Luna 25 has been worked on since at least 2017, not to mention that Luna just means moon.

        • ours@lemmy.film
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          I doubt it since India has a mission right now to do the same thing.

        • Perfide@reddthat.com
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          It’s not false, but from Russia it’s worthless. China and India have actually competent missions to the same region planned, and the US’s Artemis 3 crewed mission is also planning to land in that region by 2026. This was absolutely an incompetent rush job attempt to beat everybody else to the punch in the name of “Russian Superiority”.

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          Coming from the Russian government, who cares? They’re so incompentent and dishonest that none of their results could be trusted.

        • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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          It’s not, but they already said they weren’t going to share any results with the international community, so nothing of scientific value was lost anyways

      • SterlingVapor@slrpnk.net
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        There’s nothing vain about looking for rocket fuel outside the gravity well, the only question is “why now?”

    • ProvableGecko@lemmy.world
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      Based on what I know about Russia they would probably claim moon as part of Russia and then bomb the 1969 moon landing site with cluster munitions. Fuck em

      • trooperjess@lemmy.world
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        No, that would be what the US had planned to do. This was right after spudink as to one up the USSR.

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    Well, Russia certainly lived up to its reputation.

    Maybe we can give the moon lander the benefit of the doubt and assume it spotted a rock that looked like a children’s hospital, prompting a change in priorities.

    • GreatFord@lemm.ee
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      They were also trying to be the Indian team, who are taking a longer time using gravitational whip to send their mission to the Moon’s pole.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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      They were actually always pretty good at unmanned missions. This was the same design from the 1970s.

      • btaf45@lemmy.world
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        The Russians have a bunch of crashed spacecraft on Mars and no successful Mars landings.

        • oatscoop@midwest.social
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          The Soviets were also the only ones to successfully put a lander on Venus, and accomplished this in the 70s. They were a powerhouse when it came to unmanned missions: even with more primative control systems they had to work with.

          Of course with the fall of the USSR all the smart people behind those successes could leave, so …

      • SirMechsALot@lemmy.world
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        Yeah historically we’ve used them a ton for collaborations in space architecture. I can’t share too much but my team has worked with them, before my time, and they refused to make any advancements in certain systems. Since then collaboration has been incredibly difficult but not because of Russia’s engineers.

    • greavous@lemmy.world
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      That is basically the rough history of our planets space exploring ventures. American/russia one upping each other.

    • kattenluik@feddit.nl
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      There’s no sources on this that I could find and It’s definitely a weird thing to claim.

  • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    Huh. I don’t see any hexbears or Lemmygrads on this thread. Interesting. Can’t complain.

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      God it is validating to see you say that. I’m new to the platform, reddit refugee, and am bombarded by what appears to be hard core communists. It’s exhausting.

        • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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          Also the fact that they all act like /r/the_donald trolls

          Nothing makes me less inclined to hear out your opinion when you’re acting like a middle schooler whose trying to look cool in front of his friends lol

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        Tankies used to care about communism. Now they’re just anti-western. They will not question if Russia or China are actually communist because it doesn’t matter. They don’t care about worker protections or freedoms. They only care about “owning the west.”

        • AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml
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          Yeah I find them rather funny… I’m antiamerican and leftist but many seem to think that it’s a binary and we must choose.

          Having actually lived and worked in China for the CPC, I find their idolizing of the modern Chinese nation-state a bit laughable

      • uis@lemmy.world
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        Fuck Putin, fuck Stalin. Peace to world, glory to science and production, mechanize ancillary work, reduce manual labour.

        Here’s a little bit of communism you didn’t want.

      • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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        Those communists are the ones who built the platform you’re speaking on.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          Not communists. (Also, most of them have never made a commit. They didn’t do anything.)

          Sure, the original developer runs Lemmygrad. Doesn’t matter. The great thing about FOSS is that no one owns it. There have been many contributers, not just the first person. Also, anyone can fork it if things go bad. No one owns FOSS. You can use it and contribute to it, but you can’t own it.

          I don’t care about their personal beliefs of any one of the contributers. As long as the software works, that’s fine. I like rocketry, but the nazis contributed a lot to that. It doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t change the function of it.

          • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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            And? I made none of the claims you’re refuting. I just meant this place wouldn’t exist without some of these “communists” and since they made it and were here for years before most of us, it’s not surprising there’s a lot of communist content.

            • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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              God it is validating to see you say that. I’m new to the platform, reddit refugee, and am bombarded by what appears to be hard core communists. It’s exhausting.

              Those communists are the ones who built the platform you’re speaking on.


              I just meant this place wouldn’t exist without some of these “communists” and since they made it and were here for years before most of us, it’s not surprising there’s a lot of communist content.

              You sound like you’re implying that because they made significant technical contributions to useful software, then that automatically validates their political beliefs, and /u/KrayZeeOne@lemm.ee should just put up with it.

              • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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                Unless you want to be in a bubble, I think we should at least have the option to be able to put up with people who have different opinions (regardless of whether they made the software). There are walled gardens like Beehaw for those who want a more filtered experience. The Fediverse is big enough for both of us.

            • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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              Sure, and the software is pretty good. Nazi rockets were also good. It doesn’t mean anything else is good or valid about them. I don’t care if the creator is a tanky (definitely don’t care if they’re a communist) to enjoy the software. It is a useless point to say they created it as a way to justify anything else being good.

              It’s an appeal to false authority and therefore unrelated to the conversation.

              • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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                It doesn’t mean anything else is good or valid about them

                Did I praise someone? I noted that some communists built this platform that’s why you see them here.

                It’s an appeal to false authority and therefore unrelated to the conversation.

                I did what now?

          • uis@lemmy.world
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            Sure, the original developer runs Lemmygrad. Doesn’t matter. The great thing about FOSS is that no one owns it. There have been many contributers, not just the first person. Also, anyone can fork it if things go bad. No one owns FOSS. You can use it and contribute to it, but you can’t own it.

            You sound like communist

            • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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              Yeah, I would mostly agree with that. More of an anarchist bent, but sure. I’m not a tanky. I have no issue with communism, but I do have an issue with authoritarianism, especially authoritarianism that uses the name communism as a cover while not protecting worker rights and freedoms.

        • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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          And? They don’t run anything but their own instances.

          Its FOSS. they don’t have any ownership over the platform as a whole. If they started trying to fuck with the lemmy source code for their own agenda, then we’d just fork it and carry on as before

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        Could be. They aren’t on my home instance. I’ve seen several threads about this and literally none of them, as far as I could see, had any comments from them.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      The quality of Russian science is irrelevant when 99% of funding goes into building new palaces and buying yachts.

      • TheBlue22@lemmy.world
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        Don’t forget about brain drain.

        The majority of Russians with any braincells (or money) have already left the country.

        • Aux@lemmy.world
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          Yeah, brain drain is real. Every Russian I know from IT sphere has left. Many left after 2014 , everyone else left in 2022. Every person with a brain doesn’t want to associate with the regime in any way and doesn’t want to suffer.

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      It’s roskosmos being roskosmos. I’m surprised it didn’t explode mid-air.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        Roskosmos is usually pretty competent.

        I mean, they helped build the ISS (and a lot more) and have sent a lot people up there for YEARS without any fatalities.

        ^^^and ^^^no ^^^I ^^^dont’t ^^^like ^^^Russia.

        • uis@lemmy.world
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          Engieneers are mostly competent(even with salary of about 50k ₽/mo or 550$/mo), but managment… Incompetent managmemt is best you can hope, because Rogozin is much worse.

          Production and quality control is so terrible that “accidentaly” much cheaper solder may be used, that later will cause A HOLE in ISS.

          Also this particular mission was rushed. “Won’t be ready for another year? Launch now!”

          • lud@lemm.ee
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            “Won’t be ready for another year? Launch now!”

            Ah, the EA strategy, a true classic!

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            You are never going to have competetent management when they’re forced to follow unrealistic goals due to political reasons.

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    They call it a successful missile strike on the moon and they’re back to winning again.

    The Lunar War over minerals is going to be so fucking stupid and fun.

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      There probably isn’t a worse war in terms of property damage per money spent to damage it you could come up with. Setting up a system of mining minerals, sending it back to earth, and making money on the process is going to be the biggest megaproject you can imagine. All of it very easy to break.

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    “Today, Russian engineers managed a perfect example of Lithobreaking on the moon, showing the superiority of Soviet cosmonautics.” – Russian News Outlets

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    No no no, the moon illegally and meanly crashed into innocent Russia’s poor little defenseless space robot without any provocation!

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    What, invading Ukraine wasn’t enough and now they need to pollute the moon with their piece of shit spacecraft too?

    Fuck Putin, fuck Russia, etc, etc.

    Slava Ukraini!