Launched in 2005, the Luna-25 program was meant to mark Russia's comeback in the race for the Moon. The mission's failure, confirmed on Sunday, August 20, by a press release from the Roscosmos agency announcing the probe's loss, ultimately sounds like a disavowal for Moscow's entire space program, after years of setbacks and billions of rubles sunk into it.

The objective was ambitious. Launched on August 11, from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East, Luna-25 was to land on the lunar south pole. This would have been a first, as terrestrial spacecraft usually land in the Moon's equatorial zone, which is more suitable for maneuvering.

The interest of this objective lies in the fact that water ice has been observed in the craters of the polar region. After landing on the Moon, the probe was to collect and analyze soil samples. Its predecessor, Luna-24, launched in 1976, had already enabled Soviet scientists to be the first to prove that regolith, the thin layer of dust produced by the incessant impact of meteorites that covers the Moon's surface, contained water.

But the 800-kilogram craft probably crashed on landing. "According to preliminary observations, the station has ceased to exist following a collision with the Moon's surface," Roscosmos said on Sunday. "The measures taken to search for the spacecraft and make contact with it have yielded no results."

This disappearance is unlikely to call into question Russia's ambitions. These have been regularly reaffirmed by President Vladimir Putin, and they take on a particular dimension at a time when Moscow, excluded from a number of cooperative ventures with the West as a result of the war in Ukraine, intends to deny any isolation or scientific downgrading. Luna-25 is to be succeeded by a number of programs (sending lunar satellites or probes), with the aim of landing cosmonauts on the moon in 2029, for the first time in Russian history.

Nevertheless, the failure of the mission launched 15 years late casts a harsh light on the state of Russian space programs. Since 1991, all Moscow's attempts to reach other celestial bodies have failed, including Mars-96 and Phobos-Grunt, which was due to reach one of Mars's two satellites in 2011. Russia retains important skills in other areas (satellite launches, participation in the International Space Station), but it is struggling to resurrect the Cold War confrontation with the United States.

For Washington, the rival is now China, with Beijing having succeeded in landing two probes on the Moon between 2019 and 2020. By a stroke of luck, India could soon achieve the same feat as Russia. The Chandrayaan-3 probe is due to land near the south pole on Wednesday, August 23. Unlike the Russian mission, which was expected to last at least a year, the Indian probe will simply deposit a small rover designed to travel around 500 meters, with a lifespan limited to just a few days.

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