A combination picture of NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images shows the surface of the moon on June 27, 2020 and August 24, 2023, before and after the appearance of a crater, likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna-25 mission, in these screengrabs obtained from a GIF image released August 31, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russia’s failed Luna-25 mission left a 10-metre-wide crater on the moon when it crashed last month after a problem preparing for a soft landing on 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 spun out of control and crashed into the moon, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once mighty space programme.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft imaged a new crater on the surface of the moon that it concluded was the likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna 25 mission.

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“The new crater is about 10 meters in diameter,” NASA said. “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.”

After the crash, Moscow said a special inter-departmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.

Though many moon missions fail, the crash underscored the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1 in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.