MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. More than ten missions have failed as part of the Soviet Union’s lunar program, each of them a lesson to engineers about how to make a better spacecraft, Yury Borisov, director general of Russia’s Roscosmos State Space Corporation, said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
"The history of conducting these kinds of complicated scientific experiments is fraught with numerous accidents. Over ten missions failed between 1958, when the Soviet Union seriously engaged in a lunar program, and 1966, when the Luna-9 mission made a soft landing on the moon. Each of the failed missions gave impetus and provided working knowledge to engineers. It’s only possible to reduce the number of failures through the use of new technologies and advanced modeling methods," he noted.
The Roscosmos chief pointed out that "the invaluable experience that our predecessors gained in the 1960-1970s was almost lost" because there was a disconnect between generations. However, one of the silver linings of the failed Luna-25 mission is that a team will look into and correct all the mistakes that occurred.