Russia has bowed out of the race to the moon with India after its robot lander crashed on the lunar surface, setting Chandrayaan-3 on an easier course while ISRO scientists achieved yet another successful manoeuvre to take the spacecraft closer to the moon in its soft-landing attempt on August 23.

ISRO on Sunday said it has successfully reduced the orbit of Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Lander Module (LM), and it is now expected to touch down on the surface of the Moon at 6.04 PM on Wednesday.

This came even as Russian lander Luna-25 crashed into the moon after going into uncontrolled orbit. "The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon," Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement.

Roscosmos said it lost contact with the spacecraft on Saturday after it ran into trouble while preparing for its pre-landing orbit after reporting an "abnormal situation" that its specialists were analysing. The Luna-25 was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East on August 10.

Incidentally, the ambitious Chandrayaan-2 had also crashed into the lunar surface four years ago, but its successor has ticked all the orbit-related boxes so far as part of its journey towards the Moon.

Chandrayaan’s LM, comprising the lander ‘Vikram’ and rover ‘Pragyan’, is expected to touch down on the lunar surface on Wednesday, August 23 at 6.04 PM, added ISRO, which had earlier said the soft landing would take place at 5.47 PM that day.

Having taken off on August 11, Luna-25 was supposed to touch the moon surface on August 21, two days before Vikram’s scheduled landing.

ISRO said the second and final deboosting (slowing down) operation has successfully reduced the LM orbit to 25 km x 134 km. The module would undergo internal checks and await the sunrise at the designated landing site. The powered descent is expected to commence on August 23, 2023, around 5.45 PM, ISRO said in a post on ‘X’, formerly Twitter.