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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered a new crater on the moon 33 feet in diameter, as wide as it is tall is a 3-story construction.
It may simply be the crash site of Russia’s Luna-25 lunar lander, NASA said Thursday.
“During its descent” on Aug. 19, “Luna 25 experienced an anomaly that caused it to crash into the surface of the Moon,” NASA said in the statement.
The sticking point over the crater’s location is about 250 miles from where Luna-25 was supposed to land, NASA said.
Luna-25 was supposed to land on the moon last month, but the probe lost communications during its descent and crashed.
It is the first Russian project to the Moon in just 50 years. If Luna-25 had indeed landed, it would have been the first spacecraft in history to land and explore the lunar south polar region.
Instead, India beat Russia and became the first country to effectively land a spacecraft in the lunar south polar region last August with its dog-sized lunar rover, Pragyaan. In the past, the country had tried to land a craft near the lunar south pole, but failed the first time.
Pragyaan’s discoveries may be instrumental in learning how to extract water from the moon, a purpose that all moon-minded nations are considering.
And while India’s 57-pound rover may be small, it “definitely puts it overseas as an emerging space power,” Robert Braun, head of space exploration at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, previously told Insider.