{"id":283561,"date":"2026-02-14T08:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T08:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283561\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T08:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T08:39:08","slug":"space-mystery-solved-as-long-lost-soviet-lander-spotted-on-surface-of-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283561\/","title":{"rendered":"Space mystery SOLVED as long-lost Soviet lander spotted on surface of the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists may have spotted a long-lost lunar spaceship on the surface of the Moon, 60 years after it vanished.<\/p>\n

The Soviet Union’s uncrewed Luna 9 lander was the first spacecraft to land on the lunar surface in February 1966, years before the US Apollo missions.<\/p>\n

After the craft sent back an image of the moon, its batteries gave out, leaving its final location a mystery.<\/p>\n

However, scientists now believe they have tracked down Luna 9’s hiding spot.<\/p>\n

A computer programme dubbed You-Only-Look-Once-Extraterrestrial-Artefact”(Yolo-Eta) scanned hundreds of images taken by Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.<\/p>\n

It was able to find several previously unseen marks on the Moon’s Ocean of Storms.<\/p>\n

The intrusions into the lunar surface might have been made by Luna 9’s descent.<\/p>\n

The lander utilised a spherical landing capsule and hit the Moon at 14mph, deploying inflated airbags and firing its braking engine.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/\"Moon\"\/<\/p>\n

PICTURED: Map from 1966 showing the locations of lunar impacts – including the Ocean of Storms<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

It is believed it bounced several times before coming to a stop thanks to four-petal like panels.<\/p>\n

The lander had no solar panels and was only able to send 9 images back to Earth over the course of three days.<\/p>\n

Due to poor calculations of the spacecraft’s trajectory and a chaotic descent.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter began to send back high quality images of the moon.<\/p>\n

LATEST FROM OUTSIDE OUR ATMOSPHERE<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

PICTURED: A mock-up of the lander at a Paris museum. It is believed the lander bounced several times before coming to a stop thanks to four-petal like panels<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<\/p>\n

Scientists believed Luna 9’s location would be contained within the photography.<\/p>\n

They then decided to develop their machine-learning algorithm Yolo-Eta, which was trained on known lunar landing sites.<\/p>\n

Yolo-Eta “practiced” by finding Apollo landing sites and the Soviet Union’s Luna 16.<\/p>\n

When it successfully found both previous landing sites, it was let loose to find Luna 9.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Luna 9 sent back the first ever image of the lunar surface taken from the Moon itself<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

NASA<\/p>\n

In their paper, published in the journal npj Space Exploration, researchers identified a location they believed to be the likeliest spot for Luna 9 to be hiding.<\/p>\n

Within 200 metres of that spot, astronomers found several small marks which might be the Soviet spacecraft’s components.<\/p>\n

They also identified a series of craters which might correspond to Luna 9’s impact sites.<\/p>\n

Finally, they compared their possible location to the photography Luna 9 sent back from the moon before its batteries gave out.<\/p>\n

They found it to be a plausible match based on the horizon and general topography.<\/p>\n

The researchers said: “Taken together, these results identify a small cluster of features near 7.03 degrees north, -64.33 degrees east that display spatial and morphological characteristics consistent with spacecraft hardware.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists may have spotted a long-lost lunar spaceship on the surface of the Moon, 60 years after it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-283561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}