Russia seems to have lost contact with its first lunar probe in half a century

"The management team is currently analyzing the situation."

See full article...

 

[Constant Variable]

Next up: the Duma will rush through a law that redefines any type of contact between a Russian probe and a celestial body as a "successful landing". Problem solved!

 

[passivesmoking]

The Ars commentariat never fails to be golden

Tell you what, when they stop genociding Ukraine, I'll consider being less gleeful in their failures.

 

[pidgin8]

Seems like Russia has successfully delivered their signature outcome - destruction and chaos.

Can they be sanctioned for littering the moon with old probe parts ?

 

[passivesmoking]

Has an appropriate scapegoat been selected and disseminated to keep everyone's story straight?

LGBTQ+ African-American transwoman astronauts with Ukrainian sympathies, probably

Russia is so "anti-woke" these days that it's no wonder they give the Republican party wet dreams.

 

[passivesmoking]

It is rather strange that many Arsians seem rather happy with the misfortunes of this spacecraft. Why is that ?

Gee, I wonder why?

Spoiler: Some people may find this disturbing, though it is one of the less awful images I found

 

[pehash]

Next up: the Duma will rush through a law that redefines any type of contact between a Russian probe and a celestial body as a "successful landing". Problem solved!

"Successful special landing operation"

 

[passivesmoking]

It seems that Luna 25 has successfully intercepted the Moon. The skies over Russia are safe once again!

But at least there's now a new crater on the moon, and the discovers get naming rights!

May I suggest "Putin's Hubris" as a good first choice of name for the new geological feature?

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

Stolen bitcoin won't take you to the moon?

 

[ColdWetDog]

It seems that Luna 25 has successfully intercepted the Moon. The skies over Russia are safe once again!

At least they got the right planetary body. It is entirely possible that they could have created a new Russian Navy submarine.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Perhaps the front fell off.

But enough about the war, how's their OTHER moonshot doing?

The ones that are being marched around their playgrounds in military drills, and taught in school how to field strip an AK-74. Eventually the brainwashing takes hold and it’s too late. The Hitler Youth may have been victims themselves, but they’re still the Hitler Youth.

Brainwashed, hypnotized since he was just a boy
An M16 and hand grenades are his only toys
He doesn't think too clear, he's sure to cross the line
Got his orders etched into his mind
Sits and waits for the perfect time
He'd rather die than give up...

 

[DovePig]

But at least there's now a new crater on the moon, and the discovers get naming rights!

May I suggest "Putin's Hubris" as a good first choice of name for the new geological feature?

Sorry, I already called dibs on naming the tiny crater "Putin Khuilo" a few pages back ;-)

 

[barrattm]

BBC is reporting it as having crashed into the moon.

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

"Successful special landing operation"

How many more HIMARS than we’ve actually provided are they going to have claimed to have destroyed this time?

 

[serendipity24]

So the 'Special Lunar Operation' has failed, let's hope that other Russian 'Special ... Operation' crashes and burns as well!

Slava Ukraini!!!

 

[Maury Markowitz]

the economy of Soviet Union was already shit for quite some time, and some have argued that it is the forceful investments into the military and space race

Speaking of, the budget in Russia was recently modified so that military spending is now one third of the federal budget.

In contrast, the US military spending, by far the greatest in the world, is about 3% of the budget.

So the county is selling its entire future on this gamble, which has no chance of paying off. The minerals and grain in perpetuity are worth less than they’ve dumped into this.

For further contrast, the US’s ten years in Vietnam cost about 1 billion in total, inflation adjusted, or about 1/23rd GDP or about 2.5% on a yearly basis. That war caused the fall of the gold standard and rampant inflation and the resulting high interest rates of the 1980s that nearly cost our family our house.

So yeah, they can’t afford this but they’re in full HODL mode like a guy with two bored apes.

 

[mhalpern]

How many more HIMARS than we’ve actually provided are they going to have claimed to have destroyed this time?

600.


note Wikipedia says over 540 have been built.

 

[Wickwick]

Seems like Russia has successfully delivered their signature outcome - destruction and chaos.

Can they be sanctioned for littering the moon with old probe parts ?

Much of the debris will have turned to vapor if not plasma and whatever's left would have been pulverized and atomized pretty well. I doubt you'd be able to find much that's identifiable as the lander other than the hole and ejecta it left behind.

 

[alanmies]

AKA a special moon landing operation.

 

[Dje]

The previous Russian scientific mission, the Fobos-Grunt, in 2012 also ended up in dust. At that time, a Russian relative with experience in the Russian scientific millieu had told me insiders' rumors were that its failure had been planned due to gigantic technical short comings. Under pressure from "the top", they had launched the probe anyway, for propaganda, all knowing it couldn't work. From a Russian perspective, it's better to pretent to be part of the club of "space nations" than keep tinkering a machine in your garage for ever.

I wonder how much the Luna-25 mission follows the same path...

After Potemkin villages, Potemkin spacecrafts?

 

[randomname19937]

Russia is so "anti-woke" these days that it's no wonder they give the Republican party wet dreams.

Seriously? Anti-woke? They're fu...g actively persecuting them! It's like calling KKK anti-affirmative-action.

 

[sgreen1]

I would not be surprised if the Russian propaganda machine suggested the cause was down to some form of western interference.

 

[The_Lamb]

The most embarrassing thing isn't that it crashed on the surface of the Moon, it's that it was originally aiming for a church in Odessa.

 

[witiya]

BBC is reporting it as having crashed into the moon.

Other than that, Mr. Putin, how was the flight?

 

[r0twhylr]

Honestly, the timing sounds a little suspicious to me. I'm half inclined to think the Russians rushed things to get to the lunar South Pole region first. And if that were the cause of the failure, that would be quite embarrassing. Fifty years ago, I don't think many people would have imagined that the Russian (Soviet) space program would one day be inferior to India's. But then, I doubt many people back then imagined that the United Kingdom's navy would end up being inferior to India's.

Sounds reasonable. If that's the case, I wonder if they either a) rushed a new program through, or b) picked up an old existing/dormant project and pushed it forward without mitigating some of the problems that likely stymied prior development, similar to the Nauka module.

 

[TROPtastic]

Science is pure and faultless.

Unfortunately, this is not always true. The book "Technoscientific Angst: Ethics and Responsibility" by Raphael Sassower makes a strong case for why science as a process can be corrupted, but I'll just cite one example:

During WW2, Nazi scientists conducted experiments on prisoners in the concentration camps, in some cases as alternatives to killing them with gas. During these tests, German doctors and scientists did things including amputating limbs without anesthesia to test blood coagulant drugs, forcibly sewing twins together to determine how conjoined twins worked, and making people survive on nothing but seawater to determine if seawater could be made drinkable.

I doubt you would claim that science was "pure and faultless" here, unless you abstract the term to the extent that it becomes completely divorced from the methods by which it was carried out and the people who performed it.

 

[kvndoom]

A 250,000 mile drop from a window.

 

[TROPtastic]

Tell you what, when they stop genociding Ukraine, I'll consider being less gleeful in their failures.

Oh trust me, I am very appreciative of the original commenter's post. My only wish is that they had posted the gif version, and not the two panel "oh no / anyway" image.

 

[infinityedge]

 

[Deleted member 850282]

Luna 25 crashes . . . I laughed SOOOO hard, I almost plotzed in my kugel. It's 7AM on a Sunday morning, and that news absolutely made my month.

 

[RobertAtArsTechnica]

Should'a stuck to the trampoline.

 

[wagnerrp]

Much of the debris will have turned to vapor if not plasma and whatever's left would have been pulverized and atomized pretty well. I doubt you'd be able to find much that's identifiable as the lander other than the hole and ejecta it left behind.

Pulverized, sure, but atomized, vaporized, turned to plasma? … Impact velocity is only going to be ~2km/s.

 

[Deleted member 850282]

I bet the US (NASA) and every other country with the capability to contact the probe are STILL happy to help out with no strings attached and I would expect that the US and other countries would immediately make an exception to any sanctions, if any, that may prevent it.

But I doubt that Russia is requesting/accepting any help from any nations that support Ukraine.

Personally, putin and roscosmos can lick my balls right around to the brown, and I think I speak for the majority of literate and intelligent westerners. Help those that are struggling so hard to DESTROY civilization???? Not effing likely. Wait till that lunatic in North Korea fires one of the ICBMs that putin gave him and drops a nuke on Seoul or Seattle. And that is not even considering the invasion of the Ukraine, that is polarizing the world into two armed camps, one of which wants to do putin's dream of destruction.

Yeah, I'll help them with their pathetic space program.

 

[Papewaio]

The trouble with this sentiment is that while the people in control of Russia may be evil, that doesn’t mean all of the Russian population are evil. There’s going to be a large number of people in Russia who simply want to live their lives, go to work, and come home to their families. Given the fascist state that Russia has become they have very little say in what goes on. Yes they need to realize that they need regime change in order to improve their lives, but don’t go around condemning everyone in that country for things they can’t control.

As an analogy, I despise what Kim Jon Un is doing in North Korea, but I pity the peasants who are suffering under his rule.

---

For the donwvoters, how many Russian children under the age, of say, 5 deserve your wrath?

So how many Ukrainian children deserve to die or be kidnapped by Russia?

None for either.

But Russian people have benefited, not greatly, but they have benefited from their governments dodgy dealings in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. They get a bully in power for a generation. Their choices have been consequences for many other nations.

Their choices are coming back now with consequences. It should be an object lesson for other nations too…

 

[Oldmanalex]

Has an appropriate scapegoat been selected and disseminated to keep everyone's story straight?

Surely it must be "that time of the month" for an American astronaut somewhere pertinent like Florida or Houston. Mystery explained. Goat scaped. Much more probable than all of the high class components were stolen by Rogozin on their way to the manufacturing site.

 

[Rainbird]

If they have any sense, they'll blame the failure on moon sharks.

 

[grin0048]

Spoiler

 

[respice]

“Earlier today, Luna 25 executed an unplanned energetic lithobraking maneuver and is now on the moon. In an unrelated event, the following Roscosmos engineers have volunteered to join the Russian army in their glorious effort to liberate Ukraine from fascism!”

-not a press release but wouldn’t it be funny if it was?

 

[ab78]

This is why ars needs a laughing emoji response for stories. Couldn't have happened to a nicer space agency