NASA Discovers Newly Formed Crater on Moon Likely Resulting from Russian Spacecraft Impact
Around two weeks ago, NASA detected a newly formed small crater on the Moon, which is believed to have been caused by the crash landing of a Russian probe.
The discovery was made by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) by comparing before and after images of the estimated impact site provided by the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The Luna-25 probe crashed on August 19, dashing Russia’s hopes of reviving its long-dormant lunar program with its first soft landing on the Moon’s south pole.
That accolade instead went to India, which successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 mission on August 23 and is currently exploring the polar region with its Pragyan rover.
LRO, which has been in lunar orbit since 2009, took its most recent “before” image in June 2022. This was compared to an image taken on August 24, 2023.
“Because this new crater is close to the estimated impact point of Luna 25, the LRO team concludes that it likely originated from that mission rather than a natural impactor,” NASA said in a statement.
The new crater is about 10 meters (32 feet) in diameter, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) smaller than Luna-25’s intended landing site.
NASA also plans to return to the Moon under its Artemis program with the goal of building a permanent presence. Ice deposits could be used to support human habitats or broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to be used as rocket fuel.
