The final resting place of the failed Russian Luna-25 lander has apparently been found. Luna-25, the first Russian lunar probe in 47 years, crashed into the lunar surface on August 19 during a maneuver designed to attempt a landing a few days later. Agency officials said the crash likely created a crater that was found last week by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

LRO experts set out to locate Luna 25’s tomb, using the approximate collision field provided by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos.

The LRO team captured an image of the region with the probe’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital Camera (LROC) on August 24, then compared the new images with images of the same region previously taken by the LROC, most recently taken in June 2022. This study revealed a bright and fresh crater on the moon that had been excavated in the last 14 months.

“Since this new crater is located not too far from Moon-25’s probable impact point, the LRO team concluded that it was more likely to have formed as a result of this mission than a natural impact,” NASA officials said in a statement. said. on August 31st. announces that he has found it.

The new crater is about 33 feet (10 meters) wide and is located at about 58 degrees south latitude, on the steep inner rim of the lunar Ponteculant G crater, the statement said. The collision site is approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Luna 25’s planned landing site, located at 69.5 degrees south latitude.

Luna-25 was launched on August 10, making it Russia’s first mission to the moon since 1976, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union. The mission’s new title was an attempt to remember those proud past days; The 1976 attempt, a successful sample return mission, was named Luna-24.

Luna 25 was intended to be the first probe to make a soft landing near the moon’s south pole, believed to be rich in water ice that could potentially support human outposts.

Its failure, however, brought this frenzy to the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3, which launched on 14 July and landed on 23 August. Chandrayaan-3 is still exploring the pole with a lander and a small rover designed to work. a total of one lunar day, or about 14 Earth days. At the end of this period, both robots are expected to be disabled with the onset of a moonlit night. Source