in the indian capital, new delhi, is retired lieutenant general anil kumar bhatt.is also director general of the indian space association. and in philadelphia, in the u.s., we have derrick pitts. he's chief astronomer and planetarium program director at the franklin institute. a very warm welcome to all of you. derrick, the big question that everyone is asking today is, what happened? what went wrong with the luna-25? guest: from the reports that we have had so far, there is an indication that there was a malfunction with a landing maneuver that the russians were attempting to begin the landing sequence. they were moving from one orbit level down to another orbit level, and as far as we know, either the rocket fired too long fired too little, or fired in the wrong direction, and the result was a crash onto the surface. so, unfortunately, that last landing maneuver, it seems, did not work. laura: steve, how embarrassing is this for muska? it is a far cry from the sophisticated soviet union. guest: it is. they landed a number of times in the past. on the moon, they l

anil kumar bhatt, retired lieutenant general from the indian army and director general of the indian space association. derrick pitts, chief astronomer and planetarium programmes director at the franklin institute. a warm welcome to all of you. the big question everyone is asking is what happened? what went wrong with the luna 25 ? >> for the reports we have had so far there is an indication there was a malfunction with a landing maneuver that the russians were attempting to begin the landing sequence. they were moving from one orbit level to another and as far as we know, either the rocket fired too long or too little or in the wrong direction. the result was a crash onto the surface. laura: steve, how embarrassing is this for moscow? it is a far cry from the sophisticated space program of the former soviet union. >> it certainly is. they landed a number of times in the past on the moon. they landed successfully, the only ones to do it, 10 times on the surface of venus. the crash comes at an embarrassing time because another nation is about to try to do the same thing. in fairness,