MOSCOW: Russia’s unmanned robot lander crashed after it had spun into uncontrolled orbit, the country’s space agency Roscosmos reported.
The launch earlier this month was Russia’s first since 1976 when it was part of the Soviet Union. The crash comes after Roscosmos reported an “abnormal situation” that its specialists were analyzing on Saturday.
“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roscosmos said in a Telegram post.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon on Monday, racing to land on Earth’s satellite ahead of an Indian spacecraft.
The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. The frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.