The final resting place of Russia’s failed Luna 25 lunar lander appears to have been found.
Luna-25, the first Russian lunar probe in 47 years, collided with the lunar surface on August 19, during a maneuver designed to prepare for a landing attempt a few days later.
Agency officials said the accident created a crater that NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) likely found last week.
Related: The Russian Luna-25 lunar lander crashes on the Moon
LRO operators went looking for the grave of Luna-25, using the estimated impact location provided by the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The LRO team imaged the area using the probe’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) on August 24, then compared the new images to images of the same area previously taken by LROC, most recently in June 2022. A crater on the moon that has been gouged out within the past 14 months.
“Because this new crater is close to the estimated Luna 25 impact point, the LRO team has concluded that it is likely from that mission, rather than a natural impact,” NASA officials said in a statement. Today’s statement (August 31) Discovery announced.
The statement added that the new crater is about 33 feet (10 meters) wide and is located at approximately 58 degrees south latitude, on the steep inner rim of the Ponticulant G crater on the moon. The impact site is about 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Luna-25’s planned landing site, which is located at 69.5 degrees south latitude.
Luna-25 was launched on August 10, marking the start of Russia’s first lunar mission since 1976, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union. The name of the new mission was an attempt to remember those proud bygone days; The 1976 effort, a successful sample-return mission, was named Luna-24.
Luna-25 aims to become the first probe ever to land softly near the moon’s south pole, an area believed to be rich in water ice that could support human sites.
But its failure led to that mantle being ceded to Chandrayaan-3, an Indian mission that launched on July 14 and landed on August 23. A total of one lunar day, or about 14 Earth days. At the end of that period, the onset of lunar darkness is expected to cause the two robots to stop working.
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