NASA has recently located a small new crater that appears to have arisen on the Moon that was likely caused by a Russian probe crash landing on the surface about two weeks ago.
The finding was first made by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) by matching the before and after images of the estimated impact point which was given by Russian space agency named Roscosmos. The Luna-25 probe was supposedly crashed on August 19th , ruining Russia’s hopes of fulfilling its long dormant Moon program of making the first ever soft landing on the lunar south pole. That historic feat was achieved by India, which successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 mission on August 23 and is right now is exploring the polar region through the Pragyan rover. LRO, has priorly been in orbit over the Moon ever since 2009. The most recent picture was the “before” image in June 2022.This served as a comparison to the image taken on August 24, 2023.”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,” a NASA authority said.
The new crater that has been formed is about 10 meters (32 feet) in diameter, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) short of Luna-25’s predicted landing point.NASA also has great plans to return to the Moon under its Artemis program, owing to the aim of building a sustained presence