Russia's first moon mission in 47 years appeared close to failure after Moscow reported a problem shunting Luna-25 into pre-landing orbit and Russian media said the lunar craft may be lost.
Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, said an "abnormal situation" occurred as mission control tried to move the craft into a pre-landing orbit at 11:10 GMT on Saturday, ahead of a planned touchdown slated for Monday.
Roskosmos said that specialists were analysing the situation but it has thus far given no further updates on Luna-25 since Saturday. Roskosmos did not answer repeated phone calls seeking comment on Sunday morning. Failure for the prestige mission would underscore the decline of Russia's space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth - Sputnik 1, in 1957 - and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
It was not immediately clear from official sources how serious the "abnormal situation" was - and whether or not Moscow could save the situation.
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