Russia..failed state.

[cilla4progress]

Russia’s bid to return to the Moon comes to an ignominious end

Arash of small, fresh craters across the lunar surface testifies to the international rush to return to the Moon by means of robot spacecraft. In April 2019 the gyroscopes on Beresheet, built by a public-private Israeli partnership, failed during the craft’s descent towards a patch of Mare Serenitatis, causing it to crash. In September that year Chandrayaan-2, a mission by the Indian space agency, isro, departed from trajectory towards its landing site, not far from the Moon’s south pole. The result was what isro’s chief called “a hard landing”—one sufficiently hard for the probe to have never been heard from again. This April a mission by ispace, a Japanese company, ended shortly after the hakuto-r spacecraft decided that it had reached the surface of Mare Frigoris while still 5km above it, and turned off its engines. The Moon’s gravity is weaker than the Earth’s, but not by so much that a spacecraft can weather a fall from that distance.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/08/20/russias-bid-to-return-to-the-moon-comes-to-an-ignominious-end

[GregariousGroundhog]

1. Splatnik!

[Qutzupalotl]

3. DUzy!

[Walleye]

2. Sometimes I wonder if his nukes still work.

[getagrip_already]

4. I suspect skulduggery.....

China for example, is claiming ownership of the moon.

Perhaps they are wreaking havoc on other countries efforts?

Or maybe it's real aliens?

It shouldn't be that hard to land a craft on the moon. It's been done on planets and even comets.

[Gore1FL]

5. Even without equipment failure, it's still hard.

Give Kerbal Space Program a whirl, sometime!

[Alexander Of Assyria]

6. Rocket science is very very hard. Always has been, always will be.

If this was a peaceful mission, no evidence was not, I do not cheer the loss of scientific knowledge.

To the Stars, through all hardship!

[Princess Turandot]

7. The Indian Space agency is having another go at it tomorrow..

..also to the moon's south pole. They hope to land both a lander and a small rover. (The Russian one didn't have a rover.)

If they succeed, Putin might start tossing beluga at his walls.