Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Roscosmos/IKI/NPO Lavochkin

NOTE: Russia’s Luna-25 in trouble? According to Roscosmos, in accordance with the Luna-25 flight program, today an impulse was issued to transfer the Moon-circling probe to a pre-landing orbit.

Russia’s Moon-circling Luna-25 has started to churn out science as the craft is readies for descent onto the lunar landscape. A reported landing date is August 21.

Analyzing newly collected data from Luna-25, investigators at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI) have obtained several results.

Micrometeorite impact

Luna-25’s ADRON-LR neutron and gamma spectrometer has recorded intense lines of chemical elements of the lunar soil.

For the first time lunar orbit, the spacecraft’s ARIES-L ion energy-mass analyzer was turned on, designed to study the near-surface ion exosphere in the subpolar region of the Moon. That data is aiding the optimal operating setting of the device. It can gauge the energy spectra of particles in the energy range from 10 electron volts (eV) to 3000 eV.

Image credit: NPO Lavochkin

The Moon probe’s PML device is designed to detect microparticles levitating near the surface of the Moon and to determine the parameters of the surrounding plasma. This instrument registered a micrometeorite impact (most likely belonging to the Perseid meteor shower) during its flight to the Moon, according to IKI.

Image credit: Background: NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LROC camera data. Photo: IKI RAS

Zeeman crater

By using Luna-25’s STS-L landing cameras on August 17, the processing of two frames of Moon imagery aided digital elevation model work by specialists from the IKI RAS and the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK). This hardware will allow future spacecraft to significantly improve the accuracy of their position in orbit.

The Moon’s Zeeman crater, imaged by two STS-L landing cameras, is a unique feature, one of the twenty deepest craters of the southern hemisphere of the Moon. The crater has an unusual size ratio: diameter is about 118 miles (190 kilometers) with a depth of roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers).

“Its formation is associated with a very strong impact, which is possible if the velocity of the impactor is very high or its substance is very dense,” explains an IKI communiqué.