The diameter of the newly formed crater is about 10 m
MOSCOW, May 30. /tass/. Specialists from Russia has most likely identified a crater (funnel) on the Moon from the fall of the Luna-25 spacecraft in August 2023. This was reported by the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
"Employees of the Laboratory of Comparative Planetology of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry (GEOHI RAS), the Institute of Geospheric Dynamics (IDG RAS) and the NGO named after V. I. Vernadsky. Lavochkin studied photographs of the place where the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed, and calculated which crater should have formed in this case. The results of this study showed that the 10-meter crater observed at the alleged collision site, apparently, was indeed formed by the impact of Luna-25," the press service said.
About the accident
The Luna-25 automatic station launched on August 11, 2023 with the task of landing in the southern polar region of the Moon and conducting studies of the soil and near-surface exosphere. She flew safely to the vicinity of the Moon and entered the orbit of its satellite. The landing of the device was scheduled for August 21.
In accordance with the flight program, on August 19, a braking impulse was issued to form a pre-landing orbit. But the braking engine worked longer than planned, and the lander crashed into the lunar surface.
The team of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LROC television camera, having received information from Roscosmos about the crash site, took pictures of this place and on August 24 received a picture showing a morphologically fresh crater with a diameter of about 10 m, which was not present in previous images of this place, the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation recalled.
Craters large and small
"The supposed crash site of Luna-25 is located in the mainland region on the inner slope of a crater with a diameter of about 40 km. This slope is steep (>20 degrees), which suggests that due to the movement of the surface material down the slope, the soil of this place is constantly mixed and should be relatively coarse-grained," said Alexander Bazilevsky, chief researcher at the Laboratory of Comparative Planetary Science of the GEOCHI RAS, quoted by the press service.
The newly formed crater is located on a hollow-undulating surface with a small number of small craters, which is typical for relatively steep lunar slopes. The diameter of the largest crater on this part of the surface is about 35 m, it has a clear shaft towering above the surrounding surface. The diameter of the newly formed crater is about 10 m.
According to the S. A. Lavochkin NGO, the Luna-25 landing block had a mass of 1,605 kg in refueled form (1,000 kg of them - fuel), and the impact occurred at an angle of 45 degrees. If the device used up only part of the fuel before impact, then its mass decreased to 800-1000 kg, and if we assume full consumption, then the mass at impact may be only 600 kg.
The maximum impact velocity, according to expert estimates, can be considered the same as for the Apollo 12, 14, 15 take-off modules, and approximately equal to 1.7 km per second. These impact parameters were compared with the results of laboratory experiments in dry sand and with the size of craters formed by impacts on the Moon by Ranger and GRAIL spacecraft and the upper stages of rockets that delivered the Apollo expedition to the Moon.
It follows from the results of the work that the size of the 10-meter crater is within the range of estimates made according to the laws of similarity for impacts into the lunar regolith, and accordingly, it could have been formed by the impact of Luna-25. The study was conducted with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the results of the study are published in the journal Solar System Research.
