NASA released an image Thursday evening of a new crater on the moon, most likely caused by the impact of the Russian Luna-25 probe, which crashed onto the lunar surface about two weeks ago.
• Also read: Luna 25 crash: The Kremlin is not giving up the race to the moon
The photo was taken by the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) probe, which has been orbiting the Earth’s natural satellite since 2009.
Teams from the American space agency compared images taken before and after the impact and observed “a new small crater,” a press release said.
This “is about 10 meters in diameter,” NASA said, and is “approximately 400 km from the planned landing site for Luna-25.”
The American space agency said it had sent commands to the LRO spacecraft to observe the area communicated by the Russian space agency Roscosmos as the estimated location of the crash.
Because the crater is “near Luna-25’s estimated impact point,” NASA teams “conclude that it likely resulted from this mission and not from a natural projectile.”
Almost fifty years after Moscow’s last successful lunar mission, the almost 800 kilogram Luna-25 probe hit the lunar soil on August 19th after an incident during a maneuver before its lunar landing.
Just days later, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, an unexplored area that is now the center of attention because it contains water there in the form of ice.