'Underfunding may be the real root of what went wrong.'
from the Vostochny spaceport picked up where the former Soviet Union's moon-probing projects left off. The final Soviet moon mission, Luna-24, successfully hauled home to Earth about 6 ounces of lunar samples in 1976.
"The Luna-25 engine fired for 50 percent longer than planned," Harvey told Inside Outer Space. That made the probe's orbital low point not the intended 11 miles but far below surface level — a"minus" 9 miles . "The perigee-lowering burn went on for too long, either through failing to shut down or through the engineers programming it wrongly," Christy told Inside Outer Space."It would have resulted in perigee below ground level. The time of signal loss probably marks when it hit the surface."
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