Context:
Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into the Moon
About Luna-25
- A Russian lunar lander mission
- Initially called the Luna-Glob lander
- It was renamed Luna 25 to emphasize the continuity of the Soviet Union’s Luna programme from the 1970s.
- Objective: to soft-land near the moon’s south pole, and there study the optical, physical, and chemical properties of moondust and moon soil, and the atmosphere.
- Space agency of Russia – ROSCOSMOS
About Luna programme
- Occasionally called Lunik is a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union and later Russia between 1959 and 2023.
- Total missions till date – 25 (Luna 1 to Luna 25)
- 15 were successful
- Many firsts in terms of Lunar exploration missions were achieved by Luna program
- Lunar samples were return to earth by later Luna mission
- All the missions were unmanned.
| Important Lunar missions | |
| Luna 1 | 1st human-made object to reach heliocentric orbit and was dubbed “Artificial Planet 1” 1st spacecraft to reach the Moon |
| Luna 2 | 1st spacecraft to impact the moon |
| Luna 3 | 1st picture of the lunar far side |
| Luna-9 | 1st soft landing and the first panoramas of the lunar landscape |
| Luna-10 | 1st artificial Moon satellite |
Read more about Moon Missions: Past, Present and Future
Source: The Hindu
Previous year question
Which of the following pair(s) is/are correctly matched?
| Spacecraft | Purpose | |
| 1. | Cassini-Huygens | Orbiting the Venus and transmitting data to the Earth |
| 2. | Messenger | Mapping and investigating the Mercury |
| 3. | Voyager 1 & 2 | Exploring the outer solar system |
Select the correct answer using the codes given below.
[UPSC Civil Services Exam – 2014 Prelims]
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer: (b)
