The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.

It was Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years.

Russia has been racing to the Moon's south pole against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on there next week.

No country has ever landed on the south pole before, although both the US and China have landed softly on the Moon's surface.

No report on whether or not Russia was attempting to use repurposed anti-ship missiles like the ones they use to attack schools and hospitals here on Earth.

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[–] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 47 points 1 year ago

Ahh yes, bringing German scientists and technical staff to the USSR to learn from them and then repatriating them back to the GDR 5 years later is exactly the same as putting an SS Sturmbanfuhrer who was personally in command of a facility where slave labor was worked to death into leading roles in your space program into the 1970s.

Let's also just conveniently ignore the fact that the R-2 rocket was developed by Korolev's team in direct competition with the G-1 rocket developed by a German team working in the USSR. The USSR chose the R-2 over the G-1 specifically because it didn't want the Soviet space program being led by Germans and by 1950 had repatriated most of the German specialists.

After 1950 the Soviet program was largely indigenous, led by Korolev and other Soviet citizens. All of the major achievements of the Soviet program were led by Soviet citizens, scientists and workers.