Lost Soviet Moon Lander May Have Been Found

Source: Slashdot

Background

An anonymous reader shares a report: In 1966, a beach‑ball‑size robot bounced across the Moon. Once it rolled to a stop, its four petal‑like covers opened, exposing a camera that sent back the first picture taken on the surface of another world. This was Luna 9, the Soviet lander that was the earliest spacecraft to safely touchdown on the Moon. While it paved the way toward interplanetary exploration, Luna 9’s precise whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since.

Recent Developments

Two research teams think they might have tracked down the long‑lost remains of Luna 9, but they disagree on the location. “One of them is wrong,” said Anatoly Zak, a space journalist and author who runs RussianSpaceWeb.com and reported on the story last week. The dueling finds highlight a strange fact of the early Moon race: the precise resting places of a number of spacecraft that crashed or landed on the Moon in the run‑up to NASA’s Apollo missions are lost to obscurity. A newer generation of spacecraft may at last resolve these mysteries.

Luna 9 Details

• Launch date: 31 January 1966
• Mission: One of the earliest attempts at a soft landing on the Moon.
• Design: Core unit – a spherical suite of scientific instruments about two feet (≈ 0.6 m) across. Its small size makes it difficult to spot from orbit.
• Commentary: “Luna 9 is a very, very small vehicle,” said Mark Robinson, a geologist at Intuitive Machines, which has twice landed spacecraft on the Moon.