• This is the best summary I could come up with:


    On Saturday, the Russian space program lost the Luna 25 spacecraft, a relatively small vehicle that was due to land on the Moon this week.

    But unlike NASA, China, India, and several companies in the United States and Japan, the Luna 25 effort does not presage the coming of a golden era of exploration for Russia.

    Rather, it is more properly seen as the last gasp of a dying empire, an attempt by the modern state of Russia, and President Vladimir Putin, to revive old glories.

    However, there have been some issues of late with leaks and other problems that have raised serious questions about quality control and the ability of the Russians to manufacture these vehicles.

    Before the launch of Luna 25, Putin made it clear that this mission was important for Russia as a signal that the country was returning to great power status.

    Sometimes such strength has been difficult to project, especially since Russia is flying the same vehicles as it did during Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure as the Soviet ruler, and has only flown to the International Space Station for a quarter of a century.


    The original article contains 695 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Yeah, how about you read the damn article? This is mentioned:

      The crew vehicle served the Soviet space program through 1991 and since then has been a mainstay for the country’s large space corporation, Roscosmos. The Soyuz is a hardy, generally reliable vehicle that NASA counted on for crew transport from 2011 to 2020, after the space shuttle’s retirement and before SpaceX’s Crew Dragon came into service.

      The Soyuz spacecraft, as well as a lot of the country’s other satellites, launches into orbit on the Soyuz rocket. This vehicle dates back even a bit further, to 1966. Russian engineers have modified and modernized both the spacecraft and rocket over time, but they remain essentially the same space vehicles.

      There’s nothing wrong with aging technology that works. However, there have been some issues of late with leaks and other problems that have raised serious questions about quality control and the ability of the Russians to manufacture these vehicles.

      IOW, Russia lost a decades-long ability under the watch of Putin/his appointed cronies

      • Yeah, Roscosmos was a pretty normal space agency, ESA even had collaborations with them (ExoMars comes to mind). It’s Putin’s political decisions that have all but ended Roscosmos. I can’t see them recovering from this, at least not in the near future.