An "abnormal situation" occurred on Saturday at Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft during a manoeuvre as it was preparing to transfer to its pre-landing orbit, Russia's national space agency Roskosmos said, as reported by the news agency Reuters. The Russian spacecraft is scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon on Monday.


"During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters," Roskosmos said in a short statement, as quoted by Reuters. Specialists are analysing the situation, it said.


Earlier, Roskosmos stated that it had received the first results from the Luna-25 mission and that they were being analysed. The space agency also shared images of the moon's Zeeman crater, which were taken from the spacecraft. As per Reuters, the crater is the third deepest in the moon's southern hemisphere, measuring 190 km (118 miles) in diameter and eight km (five miles) in depth.


According to Roskosmos, the data received so far has provided information about the chemical elements in the lunar soil and would also facilitate the operation of devices designed to study the near-surface of the moon. It added that its equipment had registered "the event of a micrometeorite impact," the news agency reported.


Luna 25 was the first Soviet lunar exploration spacecraft that was launched after 47 years. Luna 24, which took off into space on August 14, 1976, was the last Soviet lunar mission to be launched. Since Russia became an independent country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Luna 25 is the first lunar exploration mission of modern Russia. 

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The Soyuz-2 Fregat launch vehicle launched the 800-kilogram Roscosmos’s Luna 25 spacecraft from Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia, on August 10, 2023, at 23:10 UTC (August 11, 2023, at 4:40 am IST). 


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