Moscow:
Russia’s failed Luna-25 mission left a 10-meter-wide crater on the moon when it crashed last month after a problem preparing for a soft landing at the South Pole, according to images released by NASA.
Luna-25, Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years, failed on August 19 when it spiraled out of control and crashed into the moon, underlining the post-Soviet decline of a once-powerful space program.
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has imaged a new crater on the surface of the moon that it concluded was likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna 25 mission.
“The new crater is about 10 meters in diameter,” NASA said. “Since this new crater is close to Luna-25’s estimated impact point, the LRO team concludes it likely originated from that mission, and not from a natural impactor.”
After the crash, Moscow said a special interdepartmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.
While many lunar missions fail, the crash underlined the decline of the Russian space force since the glory days of the Cold War, when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit – Sputnik 1 in 1957 – and the Soviet Union cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first. man to travel into space in 1961.
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