Chennai: There has been anticipation and excitement about the softlanding of India's Chandryaaan-3 and Russia's Luna-25 missions on which will take the pole position in the moon surface for a soft landing.
But call it as a quirk of fate or luck for India, the Luna-25 crashlanded paving the way for ISRO enabling it to plan it precisely for softlanding of its third lunar Mission to detect frozen water on the moon surface.
Eversince Russia launched its Luna-25 spacecraft, a mission to land on the South Polar region of the moon after a long gap of 47 years, it was billed as a race between it and India's Chandyraan-3 on which will take the pole by making the first landing to detect the frozen water on the surface.
Russia's Luna-25 was launched way later than Chandyraan-3 RPT Chandrayaan-3 which was launched on July 14.
It has been designed in such a way that Luna-25 is expected to land on the moon in 12 days after its launch on August 21-22, as against 42 days targetted by ISRO, which has planned soft landing on Aug 23.
However, Russia's 47-year-long dream crashed when the Luna-25 crash landed into the moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit, making it a no contest.
This allowed India gain the advantage and it is all set for the powered descent of its Chandryaaan-3 at 1804 hrs on August 23, making it the fourth nation in the world to achieve this monumental feat, after US, China and Russia.
Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit, Roscosmos space agency said on Sunday.
The pilotless spacecraft was aiming to be the first ever to land on the south pole of the Moon, an area where scientists believe there could be important reserves of frozen water and precious elements.
It was expected to land on August 21. However, it lost contact with the Luna-25 on Saturday after the spacecraft ran into difficulties and reported an “abnormal situation”.