Under the Artemis program, NASA will make a new trip to the Moon with the purpose of establishing a permanent presence there. The reason? Apparently, there are some ice deposits that might be mined to support human dwellings or come up with some rocket fuel. Both of these scenarios are possible. However, until that trip is carried out, we now have the chance to view the latest lunar find, which is a crater. Around two weeks ago, a Russian probe made a last-minute landing on the surface of the Moon, but more details about it are below.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was able to make this discovery by comparing photographs taken before and after the predicted impact location. These images were given by the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been in lunar orbit since 2009, captured its most recent “before” photograph at the beginning of summer, in June 2022. The new crater has a diameter of around 10 meters and is located approximately 400 kilometers away from where Luna-25 was supposed to land.
NASA explained:
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.
The Luna-25 probe was supposed to make an initial soft touchdown on the lunar south pole, but it was lost in a crash on August 19. This dashed Russia’s dreams of resurrecting its long-dormant Moon mission with the historic landing. To our good fortune, Roscosmos was replaced by another company. India is unstoppable at this point, as evidenced by the fact that it successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 mission on August 23 and is presently exploring the polar area with its Pragyan rover. The country is preparing its next space missions with greater determination than ever before.
What are your opinions on the most recent finding and the significant milestone reached by India’s Chandrayaan-3?
