The Luna-25 spacecraft crashed onto the moon after spinning out of control while attempting to enter pre-landing orbit, ending Russia’s first moon trip in 47 years and highlighting the post-Soviet downfall of a once-dominant space program.

A malfunction occurred as the ship was being shifted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday at 11:57 GMT, according to Roskosmos, the state-owned space corporation of Russia. Monday’s landing was supposed to be gentle.

According to a statement from Roskosmos, the device “moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon.”

A special interdepartmental commission, whose task had given Moscow hope that Russia was rejoining the large power moon race, had been established, according to the report, to look into the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Luna-25 craft.

The disaster highlighted Russia’s declining space prowess since the height of the Cold War rivalry, when Moscow launched Sputnik 1, the first satellite to orbit the Earth, in 1957, and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space in 1961.

The $2 trillion economy of Russia is also currently dealing with its biggest external challenge in decades as a result of Western sanctions and the largest land conflict in Europe since World War Two.

Russia had not launched a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when communist leader Leonid Brezhnev was in charge of the Kremlin, despite the fact that moon missions are incredibly challenging and numerous U.S. and Soviet attempts had failed.

The $2 trillion economy of Russia is also currently dealing with its biggest external challenge in decades as a result of Western sanctions and the largest land conflict in Europe since World War Two.

Russia had not launched a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when communist leader Leonid Brezhnev was in charge of the Kremlin, despite the fact that moon missions are incredibly challenging and numerous U.S. and Soviet attempts had failed.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on X, formerly Twitter, that Chandrayaan-3 was scheduled to land on August 23 as soon as news of the Luna-25 disaster spread.

The Luna-25 mission was intended to demonstrate to Russian officials that their country can compete in space with superpowers despite its post-Soviet fall and the enormous costs of the Ukraine war.

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

As is customary for the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and India, Zak claimed that Russia had likewise chosen to launch a considerably more complex orbital mission before attempting the much more ambitious moon landing.

Although Luna-25 went beyond the earth’s orbit, unlike the unsuccessful Fobos-Grunt mission to one of Mars’ moons in 2011, the accident may have an impact on Russia’s moon program, which plans to launch several additional missions over the next few years, including one that might be a cooperative effort with China.

Russian scientists have frequently lamented the weakening of the space program due to corrupt officials, inept managers who are eager for unattainable vanity space projects, and a degradation in the quality of the country’s post-Soviet scientific education system.

Mikhail Marov, a renowned Soviet scientist and astronomer, commented, “It is extremely regrettable that it was not possible to land the apparatus.

Marov, 90, was admitted to a hospital in Moscow after Luna-25’s failure was reported, though it was unclear exactly what ailment he had.

Marov expressed his expectation for a thorough investigation of the causes of the crash to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

This, he remarked, “was perhaps my last hope to see a revival of our lunar program.”