NASA’s photographs reveal that Russia’s failed Luna-25 mission left a 10-meter-wide crater on the moon when it crashed last month after a glitch preparing for a soft landing on the moon’s south pole.
Luna-25, Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years, crashed into the moon on August 19, 2023, after spinning out of control, highlighting the post-Soviet downfall of a once mighty space agency.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration imaged a new crater on the moon’s surface that it assessed was likely the impact location of Russia’s Luna 25 mission.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration stated, “The new crater is about 10 meters in diameter”.
“Since this new crater is close to the Luna-25 estimated impact point, the LRO team concludes it is likely to be from that mission, rather than a natural impactor”, NASA continued.
Following the crash, Moscow announced the formation of a special inter-departmental commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Luna-25 craft.
Though many moon missions fail, the crash highlighted Russia’s decline in space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit around the Earth – Sputnik 1 in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
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