NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a photo of a new crater on the moon's surface that may have formed after the Russian Luna-25 space station crashed, Reuters reported.

The mission team worked on data from "Roscosmos" about the possible fall site. The photos were taken on August 24 and have been compared to previous footage of the area. This is how the new crater was discovered.

Crashed Russian mission left a crater on the moon, NASA images show https://t.co/K1sRodjPq6 pic.twitter.com/NPrhux0ThK

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 1, 2023

The crater is about 10 m wide and is about 400 km from the planned landing site of "Luna-25".

The Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle carrying Luna-25 was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on August 11. The spacecraft made two corrections to its trajectory, entering lunar orbit on August 16. On August 19, the vehicle was commanded to enter a descent orbit, but in the early afternoon, communication with it was lost. According to preliminary calculations, "Luna-25" crashed into the surface of the Moon.

Later, the general director of "Roscosmos" Yury Borisov announced that the extraordinary commission had been created. According to him, the main reason for the crash of "Luna-25" was the incorrect operation of the propulsion system - during the correction of the orbit, it worked for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84, TASS specified.

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