A new crater has been identified on the Moon, and scientists believe it was created when the Russian Luna 25 mission, an unmanned spacecraft, collided with the lunar surface.
Images taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the United States space agency, were released by the agency on Thursday (31) and reveal the new crater.
Video — See images of the Moon taken by spacecraft from India
The Luna 25 spacecraft, Russia’s first lunar module in 47 years, was launched on Aug. 10 and was due to land near the lunar south pole a few weeks later.
But communication with the object was disrupted and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, reported that an “emergency situation” occurred as Luna 25 attempted to enter a pre-landing lunar orbit on Aug.
Roscosmos officials later reported that an engine failure was the probable cause of the accident.
The agency shared an estimate of the point of impact on August 21, which allowed members of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team to send commands to the spacecraft the next day to take images of the site.
The orbiter imaged over a four-hour period on August 24, revealing the new crater. The photos were compared with those captured at the same location before the accident, taken in June 2022.
See the comparison of the site before and after the Luna-25 crash:
The new crater is close to the estimated point of impact, leading the orbiter’s team to conclude that it is the likely crash site for Luna 25, according to a NASA statement.
The crater measures 10 meters in diameter and was 400 kilometers from Luna 25’s intended landing target.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the Moon since 2009, has been used to detect and image impact craters created by previous missions that crashed into the lunar surface, including India’s Chandrayaan-2 in 2019.
PHOTOS — Images of the Moon captured by India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar module
Source: CNN Brasil
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