“Luna-25”: the head of Roscosmos explained what happened to the space station

The head of Roscosmos has explained in detail the reasons for the crash of the Luna-25 space station. The main cause of the crash of the station «Luna-25» was the abnormal operation of the correction engine at the stage of transition to the pre-landing orbit.

Instead of the required 84 seconds, the engine ran for 127 seconds, resulting in a loss of communication with the station. Specialists knew the position of Luna-25, but were unable to locate it because of the failure of the communication system.

“Unfortunately, the engine shutdown did not happen normally, in accordance with the cyclogram, but according to the time cutoff, and instead of the planned 84 seconds, it worked for 127 seconds. This was the main reason for the accident,” Yuri Borisov said.

Nevertheless, at 14 hours and 57 minutes communication with the apparatus stopped. Attempts to re-establish communication were unsuccessful. Preliminary ballistic calculations showed that due to abnormal operation of the corrective propulsion system, the spacecraft entered an unclosed lunar orbit and essentially crashed into the surface of the Moon.