In 1966, three years before the first humans walked on the Moon, the Soviet Union landed a small, spherical probe, dubbed Luna 9, on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n
It was a historic moment, with the spacecraft becoming the first to achieve a soft landing and return the first photo from the surface of another celestial body: a high-contrast, black-and-white image<\/a> of a rugged, rocky landscape.<\/p>\n Its actual whereabouts on the Moon, though, soon become a major point of contention. As the New York Times reports<\/a>, two groups of scientists have now come forward saying they\u2019ve found traces of the lost Soviet lander. However, the two groups don\u2019t agree on where Luna 9 is hidden.<\/p>\n What makes it particularly difficult to spot is its diminutive size. Its spherical core stage measures a mere two feet across, making it roughly the size of a beach ball.<\/p>\n As Mark Robinson, principal investigator of the camera attached to NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, told the NYT that Luna 9 is simply too small for the satellite to spot and confirm.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can stare at an image, and maybe that\u2019s it, but you can\u2019t really know for sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In a years-long effort to track down the historic relic, science communicator Vitaly Egorov turned to crowdsourcing<\/a> to scan a 62-mile-wide region on the Moon for any unusual signs.<\/p>\n Egorov claims to have found Luna 9\u2019s final resting place, after studying the horizon features in the grainy, black-and-white image the probe sent back to Earth 60 years ago.<\/p>\n He told the NYT that he\u2019s \u201cfairly confident\u201d but admitted that he doesn\u2019t \u201cexclude an error of several meters.\u201d<\/p>\n Fortunately, India\u2019s space agency has agreed to use its higher-resolution satellite, Chandrayaan-2<\/a>, to have a closer look in March.<\/p>\n Not everybody agrees with Egorov\u2019s conclusion. Scientists at the University College London determined a different landing site<\/a>, as detailed in a paper<\/a> published in the journal npj Space Exploration last month.<\/p>\n The team came up with a machine-learning algorithm, inventively called \u201cYou-Only-Look-Once\u2013Extraterrestrial Artefact\u201d (YOLO-ETA), to train an AI on existing NASA findings of past landing sites on the Moon.<\/p>\n One spot, a bright pixel near two darker spots that could be Luna 9\u2019s protective shells that it used to soften its landing, could be its final resting place, the University College London team claims.<\/p>\n For now, scientists await word from India\u2019s Chandrayaan-2 team, which could soon shed more light on the matter \u2014 a treasure hunt over half a century in the making.<\/p>\n To some, it\u2019s only a matter of time until we confirm where Luna 9 \u2014 and its twin, Luna 13 \u2014 have been resting for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of placing bigger and better cameras into orbit around the moon,\u201d Russian spaceflight expert and space journalist Anatoly Zak told NYT. \u201cIn our lifetimes, we probably will see those sites.\u201d<\/p>\n