Roskosmos: The landing on the moon failed due to a malfunction in the control unit

The first Russian lunar mission in 47 years failed due to a malfunction in the control unit on board, Reuters reports.

Russia's space corporation Roskosmos said the control unit failed to shut down the propulsion system, which exploded one and a half times longer than necessary as the spacecraft sped toward the moon.

Luna-25 spun out of control on August 19 and crashed on the moon, dashing Moscow's hopes of beating India to the unexplored south pole of the moon. The Indian aircraft landed there on August 23.

The failure underscored the decline of Russian space power since the glory days of the Cold War competition when Moscow first launched a satellite into Earth orbit - Sputnik 1 in 1957 - and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.

Roscosmos announced that it has reached a preliminary analysis of the reasons for the crash of Luna-25.

"When issuing a corrective impulse to transfer the spacecraft from a circular lunar orbit to an elliptical orbit before landing, the propulsion system of Luna-25 worked for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84 seconds," Roscosmos said.

It states that the most likely cause is that the on-board control system malfunctioned the BIUS-L angular velocity measurement unit due to incorrect data commands.

As a result, the propulsion system was not shut down when needed. The Kremlin downplayed the mission failure, saying Russia would continue to pursue ambitious plans in space.