MOSCOW – Russia’s failed Luna-25 mission left a 10m-wide crater on the moon when it crashed in August after a problem preparing for a soft landing on the moon’s south pole, according to images released by Nasa.

Luna-25, Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years, failed on Aug 19 when it spun out of control and crashed into the moon, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once-mighty space programme.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft captured an image of a new crater on the surface of the moon that led to the conclusion it was likely the impact site of Russia’s Luna-25 mission. “The new crater is about 10m in diameter,” Nasa said. “Since this new crater is close to the Luna-25 estimated impact point, the LRO team concludes it is likely to be from that mission, rather than a natural impactor.”

After the crash, Moscow said a special inter-departmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.

Though many moon missions fail, the crash underscored the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition, when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the earth – Sputnik 1 in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961. REUTERS