NASA spacecraft spots crater from Russian Luna 25 crash

NASA used its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to take pictures what could be an impact crater caused by the crash of the Russian Luna-25 mission.

The image of the crater captured by NASA's LRO. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University)

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced Thursday that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft spotted a crater that could have been caused by the ill-fated mission’s crash.

Russian space agency Roscosmos published an estimated impact point on August 21. LRO teams at NASA sent commands to the spacecraft to capture images of the site the very next day. After comparing images taken before the impact and the ones taken after, they found a small new crater.

In this GIF, you can see what #NASA teams believe is the impact crater caused by the crash of #Russia‘s #Luna25 mission pic.twitter.com/9fzVR4QVem

— IE Science (@iexpressscience) September 1, 2023

The most recent “before” image of the area captured by LRO was taken in June 2022. This means that the crater was formed after that date. And since the crater is very close to Luna 25’s estimated impact location, it is safe to conclude that it was caused by the mission instead of being a natural occurrence.

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The crater is located about 57.865 degrees south latitude and 61.360 degrees east longitude at an elevation of about 360 metres. The steep crater measures about 10 metres and it is located within the inner rim of the much larger Pontécoulant G crater. This is about 400 kilometres away from Luna 25’s original intended landing point.

The exact circumstances that led to the Luna-25 crash are still not completely clear but Roscosmos said the change in momentum the spacecraft experienced while moving into a pre-landing orbit was different from what it should have been. Previous unsuccessful Moon soft-landing missions like Chandrayaan-2. Israel’s Beresheet and Haluto-R from Japan also suffered anomalies that stopped them from achieving the right speed before landing.