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Working meetings are underway at NPO Lavochkin to begin sorting out issues that led to the August 19 crash of Russia’s Luna-25 Moon lander.

The Lavochkin group led the development, design, building and testing of the Luna-25.

 

Roscosmos chief, Yuri Borisov, met with the Luna-25 development team.

“He discussed with the enterprise team and Russian scientists the possible reasons for the unfinished Luna-25 mission, as well as the future prospects of the Russian lunar program. Before the meeting, he toured the booth, which had been set up specifically to test the mission’s software,” according to a Roscosmos telegram posting.

Unfinished mission

“Yuri Borisov emphasized that the unfinished mission of Luna-25 does not put the prospects of lunar exploration on hold,” the communiqué noted. “There is no need to make a tragedy out of this, we need to draw conclusions and continue working in this direction,” adding that Russian designers and scientists are “burning with the idea of ​​continuing the lunar project.”

According to the Roscosmos posting, “one of the options for continuing the program may be the possibility of repeating the mission to land on the south pole of the Moon in 2025-2026.”

 

India’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander-deployed rover departed its ramp and has begun exploring the lunar surface. The plan calls for the wheeled rover to carry out investigation of the south pole region touchdown area for over 14 days. 

 

From ISRO: “All activities are on schedule. All systems are normal.”

“All planned rover movements have been verified. The rover has successfully traversed a distance of about [26 feet] 8 meters.”

A number of lander payloads have been turned on and rover mobility operations have commenced, ISRO has announced.

Also, onboard the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Propulsion Module, orbiting the Moon, the SHAPE payload is in operating mode, ISRO said.

SHAPE stands for the Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) experiment.

“Future discoveries of smaller planets in reflected light would allow us to probe into variety of exo-planets which would qualify for habitability (or for presence of life),” ISRO explains.

The SHAPE payload carried on the Moon-circuiting Propulsion Module is to perform spectroscopic study of the Earth’s atmosphere and also measure the variations in polarization from the clouds on Earth.

Video of the Chandrayaan-3 rover rolling onto the lunar surface is available at:

https://youtu.be/LpnvYaAH0u8

 

 

 

 

SpaceX is pressing forward on the next orbital attempt for the company’s Starship project.

“SpaceX has submitted its final mishap investigation report to the FAA for review. That review is ongoing,” said the FAA in a statement provided to Inside Outer Space.

“When a final mishap report is approved, it will identify the corrective actions SpaceX must make. Separately, SpaceX must modify its license to incorporate those actions before receiving authorization to launch again,” the FAA statement explains.

 

India’s “elite club” status is being heralded as the country’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander/rover mission continues to unfurl. It is the first nation to reach the south pole of the Moon and joins an exclusive set of countries succeeding in soft landing upon the lunar surface, the fourth country to do so following the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China.

From the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the lander successfully deployed the Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan Rover via a ramp. “India took a walk on the Moon!” advises an ISRO X tweet. “Made in India. Made for the MOON!”

SHAPE payload

Meanwhile, the Chandrayaan-3 Propulsion Module from which the lunar lander detached is continuing its journey, set to orbit the Moon for months/years, ISRO states.

Onboard that Moon-circling module is the Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) experiment.

“Future discoveries of smaller planets in reflected light would allow us to probe into variety of exo-planets which would qualify for habitability (or for presence of life),” ISRO explains.

The SHAPE payload carried on the Moon-circuiting Propulsion Module is to perform spectroscopic study of the Earth’s atmosphere and also measure the variations in polarization from the clouds on Earth.

This payload is “SHAPEd” by U R Rao Satellite Center/ISRO in Bengaluru, capital city of Karnataka state in southern India.

Retro-reflector array

Now on the Moon, mounted atop the Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander is a NASA laser retro-reflector array. In NASA acronym-land, the device is better known as an LRA, supplied by the LRA project based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The ultra-small, compact LRA is designed to use reflected laser light from a laser altimeter or lidar on a spacecraft orbiting the Moon or landing on the Moon. They are too small to be radiated by laser light shot from the Earth.

An LRA consists of eight tiny retro-reflectors mounted on a small, high hemispherical platform. Total mass of the LRA is 20 grams, and requires no power.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote on X, congratulating India on the lunar landing success, adding: “We’re glad to be your partner on this mission!”

 

India has successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 lander/rover on the Moon. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) broadcasts live coverage available via multiple platforms.

From ISRO via X tweet: “I reached my destination and you too!” 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with the ISRO Website and the DD National TV channel go to:

YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLA_64yz8Ss

Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/ISRO

 

Russia’s emergency commission for the recent Luna-25 Moon landing failure has been appointed and has started its work. Their duty is to sort out in detail what led to the “abnormal operation” of the spacecraft’s engine, sending the probe to its destruction on the Moon’s landscape.

Reportedly, that engine ran for 127 seconds instead of the calculated 84 seconds, resulting in the crash.

 

Next lunar missions

Yuri Borisov, head of Roscosmos, advised the Rossiya-24 television channel that the results will be taken into account when implementing the country’s next robotic Moon missions.

Work on the Luna-26 and Luna-27 missions would be accelerated, Borisov said, and expressed the hope that these missions, along with Luna-28 will be successful, as noted in an Astronautics News posting at Novosti-Kosmonavtiki.

For details on what’s ahead for Russian lunar exploration, and the implications of the failed Luna-25 mission, go to: “Russia’s Moon Probe Failure: Why and What Next?” at:

https://www.leonarddavid.com/russias-moon-probe-failure-why-and-what-next/

Also, as posted on Space.com, go to: 
“What does the Luna-25 moon lander crash mean for Russia’s lunar exploration plans?” at:

https://www.space.com/russia-luna-25-moon-probe-failure-consequences

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3925 duties.

“The Gediz Vallis Ridge has been a long-term, and, at times, seemingly impossible goal of the Curiosity Rover mission,” reports Deborah Padgett, Operational Product Generation Subsystem (OPGS) Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Our path to it has repeatedly been diverted from our first difficult climb onto the Greenhugh Pediment way back in 2020, our dead-end foray onto and across the pediment through a steep side ravine of the Gediz Vallis, ultimately blocked by the potentially wheel-eating “Gatorback” ridges in 2022, and finally to our recent slip-and-slide circuitous climb out of the Marker Band Valley onto the Gedis Vallis ridge itself,” Padgett points out.

Recently, team members called that Gediz Vallis (GV) ridge the “Bermuda Triangle” of Mt. Sharp.

Uncertain footing

“We are now just a few meters away from being able to reach the arm out and get contact science on some of the ridge material, and anticipation is growing,” Padgett adds.

A recent drive of Curiosity on Sol 3921 ended a few meters short of the intended destination — a cluster of boulders — due to some sideways sliding by the robot en-route.

“The uncertain footing also left our wheels unsafe to support a deployment of Curiosity’s arm,” Padgett reports, “so all of our weekend science activities will be via targeted remote sensing rather than use of the arm’s instruments for more detailed study.”

Sulfate-bearing bedrock

Padgett says that Curiosity’s Mastcam plan involved performing a 360 degree panorama, which should be spectacular!

Mastcam will also have large mosaics targeted at the transition between the dark “float” rock ridge material and the underlying sulfate-bearing bedrock, as well as multispectral imaging of the nearby “Skiathos” and “Skopelos” boulders.

ChemCam will zap those same rocks with its laser to study a possible surface coating and compositional variations between rock layers.

Robot bump

ChemCam will also use the telescopic mode of its Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) camera to zoom in on a light colored bedrock wall adjacent to a basin of dark sand and to continue its characterization of the amazing layering on Kukenan Butte. “Meanwhile, Navcam will take some dust devil movies and a measurement of dust in the air across Gale Crater, as well as imaging of clouds and their shadows on the beautiful peaks around us,” Padgett notes.

Another short drive of 6.5 feet (2 meters) was slated, which the team calls a “bump,” and should place Curiosity within arm’s reach of the boulder collection on Sol 3924.

Following the usual set of post-drive observations, Curiosity will perform AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) – a software suite that permits the rover to autonomously detect and prioritize targets.

AEGIS and Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) imaging on Sol 3925 is to further document the geology of the robot’s new location. Also planned in the early morning of Sol 3926 was a set of atmospheric observations, including a dust measurement and a Navcam 360 phase function sky survey.

Decisional downlink

“With Monday’s plan, Curiosity will hopefully be able to finally perform contact science on a diverse cluster of GV Ridge boulders, presuming that our drive is successful and doesn’t leave our wheels perched on any of the abundant rocks on this steep slope,” says Padgett.

Another remaining challenge is a very tiny decisional downlink on Monday, “giving us very little data to decide on our next steps. In addition, on Monday, JPL is in the bull’s-eye of the very first tropical storm watch to ever be posted in Southern California by the National Hurricane Center, Padgett concludes. “Fingers crossed that the ‘GV Ridge Triangle’ will not claim another MSL [Mars Science Laboratory] plan before Curiosity reaches the top!”

One finding from Mars exploration is that the Red Planet is a haven of pervasive perchlorate.

On one hand, the carpet of perchlorate chemistry found on Mars may boost the chances that microbial life exists on the Red Planet. However, perchlorates are also perilous to the health of future crews destined to explore that way-off world.

Then there’s the prospect of using perchlorate as a solid rocket propellant. It’s there in abundance and, quite literally, fuels the imagination of launching off that distant world to other destinations.

For more information, go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story — “Perchlorate on the Red Planet: How a Toxin in Martian Soil Can Fuel Future Exploration” — at:

https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploration/perchlorate-red-planet-toxin-martian-soil-fuel-future-exploration/

Russia’s revamping of Moon exploration is off to a rocky start – the plunge from lunar orbit of the country’s Luna-25 spacecraft, destroying itself as it crashed into the Moon’s bleak landscape.

Head of Russia’s Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, reports that the main cause of the Luna-25’s failed mission was an engine failure. Instead of a planned propulsive nudge of 84 seconds, the engine operated for 127 seconds, more than the “required value” in readying the probe for its descent burn. This added impulse to Russia’s Luna-25 led to it crashing into the Moon, Borisov told Rossiya 24 television.

Modern Russia history

Following its August 10 liftoff, the Moon-bound Luna-25 had switched on its scientific equipment. All systems on the spacecraft were working normally, reported Roscosmos.

Spending multiple days in lunar orbit, the spacecraft was targeted to set down at the Moon’s south pole region, near the Boguslawsky crater. Two backup landing spots were also in play: southwest of Manzini Crater and south of Pentland A Crater.

Designed, built and tested by NPO Lavochkin, Luna-25 was to work on the lunar surface for at least one Earth year.

Luna-25’s sendoff from the Vostochny spaceport picked up where the former Soviet Union’s Moon-probing projects left off. It was back in 1976 that Luna-24 successfully rocketed to Earth about 170 grams of lunar topside samples.

Heralded as the first domestically produced Moon probe in modern Russia history, Luna-25’s flight was iconic in both political and scientific terms. The implications of its failure are likely to be non-trivial.

Low point

Following the Luna-25 crash, Russia quickly appointed an investigatory committee.

“We should expect an initial report in weeks. The immediate cause seems, in general, to be clear enough,” said Brian Harvey, a noted author and space historian in Ireland with a keen eye on past Soviet Union, now Russian, space exploits.

“The Luna-25 engine fired for 50 percent longer than planned,” Harvey told Inside Outer Space, making the low point in the orbit of the vehicle not the 11 miles (18 kilometers) intended, but far below surface level, a “minus” 9 miles (15 kilometers).

“The deeper causes will take more unraveling,” Harvey added. “The crash came not at the most risky point of the mission — the final stages of the descent to the surface — but during what should have been a routine firing to lower the orbit before the final descent.”

 

Unless it was purely an engine failure, Harvey added that it seems this failure is yet another instance whereby computer guidance and engine control issues in various forms have doomed soft-landings. 

Automated descents

Harvey points to the failures of Beresheet (Israel), Chandrayaan-2 (India), Hakuto-R (Japan) and the Schiaparelli lander on Mars (Europe).

“Ironically, the Soviet Union pioneered successful automated descents from lunar orbit using radar and pre-digital control and guidance,” Harvey said, the Luna-16, 17, 20, 21 and 24 missions. 

“Only China has a clean sheet in computer guidance and engine control descent from lunar orbit. For everyone else, it’s hard. Ironically too, Russian quality control has improved greatly in recent years, but people will remember this exception,” Harvey said.

Below ground level

Space expert, Bob Christy of the informative and authoritative website OrbitalFocus explains that Luna-25’s orbit was around 62 miles (100 kilometers) circular at 87 degrees inclination.

A thruster firing by the Moon-circling craft was set to lower it to 10 miles x 62 miles (16 x 100 kilometers) and the next phase would have been the landing burn to put it down on the surface from that 10 miles (16 kilometers) altitude. The inclination, he said, allowed Luna-25 to pass over the polar target area.

“The perigee-lowering burn went on for too long either through failing to shut down or through the engineers programming it wrongly,” Christy told Inside Outer Space. “It would have resulted in perigee below ground level. The time of signal loss probably marks when it hit the surface.”

As for the Luna-25 failed attempt, “Russia was probably starting from scratch in planning and executing this mission as its experienced engineers from the 1970s had long passed retirement age. It wasn’t a simple evolution of the previous lunar mission,” Christy concluded.

 

 

China’s confidence

According to Brian Harvey, the traditional reaction to a serious failure in the Russian and Soviet space program has been a punitive “heads-will-roll” approach and less funding. 

This time, though, that is unlikely to help Russia maintain a lunar program (Luna-26, 27) to match its partner China’s (Chang’e-6, 7, 8), Harvey said. 

“Chinese lunar engineers attended the Luna-25 launch at Vostochny for the first time, a short distance to travel geographically but a longer one politically and Russia must recover China’s confidence.” 

It is not known if there is a Luna-25 backup or if a replacement can be constructed, Harvey said, but waiting several years for Luna 26 will not encourage China.

Deeper causes

“Although sanctions on computer parts and a limited tracking system have been blamed for the failure, these are insufficient explanations,” said Harvey. “The Soviet Union ran a successful lunar program from 1959 to 1976 despite a sanctions wall and with limited tracking networks.”

The deeper causes of the Luna-25 failure go back to the 1990s, Harvey continued, the period of “chaos capitalism” when the whole space program almost collapsed.

“Russian space spending now lags far behind the U.S., China, Europe and even Japan,” Harvey said. Space science suffered the most, he said, exemplified by the failed Roscosmos-operated Mars 96 (sometimes called Mars-8) mission, “completed by candlelight in an unheated hanger in winter.” 

Underfunding

Apart from two successful observatories, Spektr R and Spektr RG, there have been hardly any scientific missions, Harvey said. Experience in running such complex missions is low, he said. 

Before all contact with Russia was cut off, European visitors to Moscow contrasted the situation of the Lavochkin design bureau with the more generously-funded human spaceflight program run by the Energiya and Progress design bureaus, possibly rightly so when human lives are at stake, Harvey pointed out.

“By contrast, meetings with Lavochkin took place not in the bureau but in adjacent hotels, not, it seemed because of secrecy but because under-investment in the science program would be so obvious,” Harvey said. “Underfunding may be the real root of what went wrong.”

 

 

 

India’s Moon orbiter from the country’s previous Chandrayaan-2 mission has established two-way contact with the ready-for-prime-time landing attempt on August 23 of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover.

“Welcome, buddy!” reports the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Meanwhile, new images have been released by ISRO of the lunar far side captured by the Chandrayaan-3 ‘s Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance Camera. This camera will assist in spotting a safe landing area — without boulders or deep trenches — during the lander’s descent and attempted touchdown.