Russia’s first probe to the Moon in nearly half a century, Luna-25, has crashed.
It would be easy to react to the news with glee, with schadenfreude. We are, after all, talking about a crash that denied a propaganda opportunity to Putin’s Evil Empire (maybe not quite as evil as Stalin’s regime but more evil, to be sure, than the USSR ever was in my lifetime).
But space exploration transcends, always transcended, national boundaries. Our petty squabbles look pretty… well, petty from the Moon. Chances are, if human beings are still around with an advanced technical civilization a millennium from now (or, if our machine descendants are still around) they’re far more likely to remember Armstrong’s first step on the Moon than Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Cold War, or even WW2.
So this crash is sad news, Putin or no Putin. I hope India’s probe, Chandrayaan-3, is more successful. Fingers crossed. Things are looking good for now but it has yet to accomplish a tricky landing.