NASA satellite spots new Moon crater where Russian spaceship likely crashed

01 September 2023 , 20:45

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The Luna 25 automatic station takes off from a launch pad in Russia last month (Image: AP)

Russia has been dealt an embarrassing blow after NASA shared photos of a new crater on the Moon created by the failed Luna-25 mission.

Vladamir Putin had ambitions of being the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon's south pole. However, the unmanned rocket ran into issues during it pre-orbit phase and span out of control and crashed onto the Moon.

NASA believes this newly spotted 10-metre crater was created by the Russian space mission. Before-and-after pictures published on its site show that the crater was made after June 2022 - with the Russian space mission commencing in August 2023. The location of the crater wasn't too far off from the Luna-25's intended landing position. NASA said the crater is 400 kilometers away from the Russian spacecraft's destination.

Russia, whose space programme has gradually lost funding to the country's military over the last seven years, was competing against India's chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which successfully touched down on the Moon on August 23. India completed its space mission with a $75 million budget — which was dwarfed Russia's $200 million budget.

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The new NASA image shows how Russia has lost its edge in space exploration since the days of the Cold War when the country was the first to launch a satellite into space to orbit the earth in 1957. This serves as yet another devastating blow to the country as its economy continues to suffer because of sanctions and the declining value of the ruble amid the Ukrainian invasion.

Between early June and mid August, the ruble's value compared to the American dollar has dropped 20%. Despite this, Putin has put on a confident facade that his economy will recover and come back stronger than ever. Russian citizens who've been feeling the brunt of the shrinking economy beg to differ. Inflation in Russia is steadily on the rise and economists predict that inflation will reach 6.5% by the end of 2023.

Additionally, the decline of the ruble can further fuel the economy's demise by pushing the inflation rate into double digits by the end of 2023. Economists say the Central Bank's interest rate hike, which is now at 12%, might not be enough to pull Russia's economy out of decline. While there are a myriad of factors that contributed to inflation in Russia, one remains central: Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine that has widely been condemned as an act of aggression.

Mataeo Smith