A Russian Moon?

Another design for renewing Russia's groundbreaking program of robotic lunar exploration is set aside. Above is a 2008 notional concept of the Roscosmos Luna-Glob orbiter, equipped with penetrators and supporting both a lander and an ISRO-built rover, part of a highly anticipated international mission recently abandoned. Under the Soviet regime Russia pioneered and brought to an end exploration of the Moon's surface [IKI/Lavochkin].

Dwayne Day

The Space Review

Earlier this month the Russian government announced that it plans to launch a lunar orbiter in 2015, followed by a lander a year later, both of them designated Luna-Glob. This is the latest version of what has been a rather convoluted series of Russian announcements about their planetary exploration plans, particularly with regards to the Moon. Previous plans had involved launching the orbiter and lander together, then changed to launch the lander a year before the orbiter. Now the Russians have switched the order. This is a more logical plan than previous ones, and at least to outsiders it appears as if the Russians are starting to develop a more sensible sequence of planetary science missions, as well as mission goals, than they have in the past. It’s something we should hope for, as the Russians could possibly by the most active nation conducting lunar exploration in the next decade.

Although they have experience with landing robotic craft on the Moon, launching a Moon orbiter before a lander is a better approach for the Russians because they need to re-learn how to walk before they can start to run. In late 2011 they suffered an embarrassing failure of their overly-ambitious Fobos-Grunt mission. The spacecraft fell silent almost immediately after launch, circled the Earth for a few weeks, and finally reentered. Many independent observers had predicted that Fobos-Grunt would fail because it was too complicated for a space program that had not built a planetary spacecraft in over a decade and a half (see “Red moon around a red planet,” The Space Review, November 7, 2011). The only real surprise was that the spacecraft failed so early, probably a sign that Russian quality control and systems engineering are both in bad shape, something that has been reinforced by a series of launch vehicle problems. Russian planetary science plans in recent years appeared to experience the “Christmas Tree” problem that American robotic spacecraft suffered from in the 1980s. This is where a mission gets more and more complex as scientists add more instruments, increasing the cost and the risk that something will go wrong. Fobos-Grunt had this problem in spades and some Russian lunar missions appeared to be succumbing to it as well. A single mission including an orbiter, lander, and rover, some of them from different countries, is very hard to integrate, but until recently such a mission was in Russian lunar plans.

Read the full article at The Space Review, HERE.

Can we re-purpose space assets?

Express-AM4: Total loss or a new purpose?

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space
 

The Russians launched a communications satellite, the Astrium Express-AM4, in August 2011.  After a failure in its Proton launch vehicle (resulting in loss of contact and control), it was presumed lost.  However, it survived and is trapped in a high-inclination orbit – a 20,000 by 650 km elliptical orbit (inclined 52° from the equator).  Forcing it to operational geosynchronous (GEO) orbit would take most of its fuel, leaving the satellite with a very limited useful lifetime.  The satellite was insured and payment has been collected on the mishap of the launch but the Russians have yet to decide on what to do with this wayward satellite circling Earth in the “wrong” orbit.  Recently they indicated that there is enough fuel to conduct a controlled re-entry and descent, guiding the satellite to a safe, watery grave somewhere in one of the Earth’s oceans.

Must this be the fate of a newly orbiting space asset?  True, it is in the wrong orbit for its original use as a commercial communications satellite, originally headed for 36,000 km above Earth to GEO, but what if instead it were repurposed?  A company called Polar Broadband has an interesting idea about turning this mishap around and using it for a good purpose.  Though not for its original users, they see a way to use this communication satellite for an assignment it is now suited to do.*  Polar Broadband envisions moving this satellite into an elongate orbit with a 24-hour period and apogee (high point) over its southern extreme (52° S) because a satellite in such an orbit can do service as a communications resource for Antarctica.

Antarctica!?  It’s a remote barren landscape!  True it is remote, but the population of this lonely continent swells greatly during southern summer when hundreds of scientists descend down under to conduct a wide variety of scientific studies.  Although there are a few central bases (like McMurdo), communications with teams in the field can be spotty and unreliable.  If this satellite could be positioned into a new orbit, it would appear in the sky for about 16 hours each day, allowing predictable, reliable communications from a variety of locations in Antarctica, including the difficult to access Amundsen-Scott South Polar Station.

An attempt to repurpose this satellite hardware appears to be a win-win for everybody.  The National Science Foundation gets a new satellite asset for safe and productive communications with and operations in the Antarctic, Polar Broadband gets to sell this service to the NSF, and by giving a green light to this endeavor, the Russians will have benefited the international scientific community.  There are no guarantees but the possibility for these rewards make the attempt worthwhile.

Two of the original 5-vehicle swarm having completed the THEMIS mission were re-purposed to become ARTEMIS, exploring the solar-terrestrial and lunar electro-magnetic plasma environment, arriving in lunar orbit after a long, low energy transfer maneuver by way of LaGrange points in 2011. Now these robust spacecraft are part of an American team totaling five unmanned probes now in orbit around the Moon [NASA].

This experiment also holds relevance for future lunar exploration.  What is being proposed for Express-AM4 is to create a reliable satellite  system so that a distant base can communicate with its mission control for science and operations.  Building and operating a working outpost at one of the lunar poles will require high bandwidth communication to remotely control robotic assets and return volumes of scientific and engineering data to Earth.  Acquiring and gaining operational experience with polar communications is a good analog to doing so around the Moon, where we will require similar communications relays with long dwell times over the poles for access to polar spacecraft and robotic vehicles.

The Russians have said that the satellite has suffered extensive radiation damage as a result of its continued passage through the Van Allen radiation belts.  But in its new guise, the satellite would receive far less radiation exposure than it would by going to GEO.  Put to new use, this “lost” satellite could provide vital communications to and between scientific expeditions and assets in Antarctica and provide us with experience relevant to future operations on the Moon.  A wayward communications satellite has presented us with an unexpected and rich opportunity.

Originally published March 19, 2012 at his Smithsonian Air & Space blogThe Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

*Update: Controllers deorbited Astrium Express AM4 on Sunday, March 25, despite the last-minute bid to salvage the spacecraft.

The Last Sampler: Failure, then Success

The last direct lunar sample was retrieved by the unmanned Soviet Luna 24 mission, after landing on the northwestern rim of a 64 meter crater on the volcanic plains of southeastern Mare Crisium (12.717°N, 62.222°E), August 18, 1976. Enlargement of lander at lower left (view the LROC Featured Image HERE). LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M174868307L, orbit 10904, during the second recent series of low altitude surveys, November 2, 2011; 43 cm per pixel resolution from 25.57 kilometers altitude [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Jeff Plescia
LROC News System

Three Soviet missions (Luna 16, Luna 20, and Luna 24) successfully collected and returned pieces of the lunar surface. Before the successful Luna 24 sample return mission in August 1976, Luna 23 was sent two years earlier (November 1974) to nearly the same location in Mare Crisium, but was unsuccessful.

Luna 24 landed in Mare Crisium on 18 August 1976 to complete the unfinished mission of Luna 23. Remarkably, the landing sites of Luna 23 and 24 are only 2.3 kilometers apart.

The region of Mare Crisium where they landed is a typical smooth mare surface with little relief in the immediate vicinity. There are numerous secondary craters scattered across the region, and Luna 24 landed on the edge of one of these. The secondary craters are the result of an impact to the northeast of the landing site, perhaps from the crater Giordano Bruno.

Luna 23 24 regionThe Luna 23 and Luna 24 landing sites. Distance between two landers is 2.3 km. Mosaic of overlapping LROC Nominal Mission NAC frames M119449091L and M119449091R, orbit 2737, January 30, 2010, resolution a half meter per pixel, with the LRO spacecraft slewed 11° at an altitude of 42.91 kilometers  [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

An international mix and match of models made
possible using Google Earth allows this highly
simulated view of Luna 24 today.

Because the precise locations of the various Soviet robotic landing sites were previously unknown to scientists and engineers, finding the spacecraft in LROC NAC images is a high priority. By locating the spacecraft, we gain an understanding of the geologic context of the rock fragments and soils returned by Lunas 16, 20, and 24. Geologic context allows scientists to place the rock fragments and soils into the "bigger picture" within our current understanding of lunar geology, geochemistry, and geologic history. Many of the robotic spacecraft from various nations have been found already in LROC images, but there are a few remaining spacecraft with unknown locations including the early Soviet landers, Luna 9 and 13.

The Luna sample return spacecraft consisted of three flight elements: descent stage, ascent stage, and Earth-return capsule. The entire suite was landed on the surface, and the sample was acquired and placed in the Earth-return capsule. Then, the ascent stage, carrying the Earth-return capsule, was launched to return to Earth. The descent stage of the Luna spacecraft was left on the surface, which is observed in the LROC NAC images of the Luna 16, 20, and 24 landing sites. In the case of Luna 23, the entire spacecraft is still on the surface because it was damaged during landing and was unable to successfully operate and return a regolith sample to Earth.

Stylized rendering of the lift-off of the Luna 24 ascent stage, August 19, 1976. The entire mission took place in the middle of a two-week long lunar night [NPO Lavochkin/RussianSpaceWeb.com/Anatoly Zak].

Unfortunately, Luna 23 experienced a malfunction and hit the surface at a very high velocity. Contact was maintained between Earth and the spacecraft after landing, but a sample could not be acquired. At the time, the cause of the failure was not known, but it seemed probable that the whole spacecraft tipped over upon landing at an unexpectedly high velocity. Indeed, the high resolution LROC NAC image (below) shows the spacecraft lying on its side!

The entire Luna 23 vehicle (descent stage, ascent stage and Earth-return capsule) landed at an unexpected speed and fell on its side. Enlargement of vehicle in lower left inset; D: descent stage, A: ascent stage. (Attendant LROC NAC frame M174868307R) [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Luna 24 landed on Mare Crisium on August 18, 1976. The launch occurred several days earlier, on August 9, from Baikonur Cosmodrome using a four-stage Proton rocket. The vehicle arrived at the Moon on August 13 and spent five days in orbit before descending to the surface. 

After less than 24 hours, the ascent stage fired, sending the sample back toward the Earth. The spacecraft returned a total of 170 grams (0.375 pounds) of regolith to western Siberia, August 22. 

It is hard not to notice all the bright spots around the Luna 24 descent stage. Are they boulders? Most likely, the small (pixel sized) bright dots are pieces of insulation blankets blown off the descent stage when the ascent stage blasted off to send the sample on its way to Earth. If you look closely you can find this type of debris up to a kilometer away from Luna 24! These bright spots are not present around Luna 23 because there was no blast effect from the ascent stage.

The returned Luna 24 sample surprised scientists as it had unexpected characteristics based on the understanding of Mare Crisium geology at the time. Most importantly, the titanium content and the maturity (or the amount of time the sample was exposed to the space environment) of the sample material were different than anticipated. But how could this be? Based on the geologic context of the lander, the reason for the difference may now be understood. With the precise location of the landing site now known, the LROC images show that the mission sampled impact ejecta from a nearby 64-meter diameter crater. That crater has excavated below the surface bringing up material from deeper lava flows that had not been previously exposed to the space environment. Thus, the Luna 24 sample may not represent nearby Mare Crisium surface materials observed using remote sensing techniques, but rather the subsurface which was only exposed to the space environment for the relatively short time. It’s amazing what geologic context can tell you!

Explore the surroundings near the Luna 24 spacecraft, HERE.

Review earlier LROC Featured Images highlighting Luna 16,  Luna 20 and Luna 24, and the two Soviet rovers Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.

"Boy, that sure looks like Luna 9!"

Fig. 1  Idealized Google Earth icon of Luna 9, the first soft-landing on the Moon (the first soft-landing anywhere other than Earth), February 3, 1966. The cartoon Russian spacecraft is pinpointed more than 30 kilometers northeast (8.0°N, 296.0°E) of an 'official' landing site (7.08°N, 295.63°E) because investigators say the 'official' coordinates place the lander well beyond the eastern rise, at left on the horizon above. That location doesn't appear to match the landscape seen in the panoramas returned to Earth. The object identified as a likely candidate, at 7.153°N, 295.630°, is less than 2.8 km north of the official coordinates, but at a notably higher elevation on that same rize, perhaps where fewer obstructions are to be found on the local horizon [NASA/USGS/JAXA/Google].

Joel Raupe
Lunar Pioneer

The problems encountered by the Russian Federation after the launch of Fobos-Grunt on November 9, when compared with the apparent ease NASA is experiencing, thus far, in getting Curiosity through the present Martian launch window, might tempt fools to dismiss Russia's interplanetary skill. Russian morale might be threatened but we're reminded yet again that Space is relentlessly intolerant of cutting corners or under-funding. The Great Galactic Ghoul, that cosmic gremlin supposedly spoiling to ruin Mars and Moon missions alike, spends most of its time here on Earth.

Off-planet, when Institutional Memory is applied efficiently, the Russians are a match for anyone.

Friday, December 2 is the 40th Anniversary of the first soft-landing on Mars, and Russia's Mars 3 lander was successful, though the lander operated on the surface only 20 seconds, back in 1971. Saturday, December 3 is the 12th Anniversary of the loss of America's Mars Polar Lander in 1999. Thus, the success of Curiosity is by no means a sure thing. When space exploration begins to look too easy disaster waits patiently at the door.

A planned Russian return to the lunar
surface may ultimately benefit from a post-
Fobos-Grunt shakeout [RussianSpaceWeb].

The first vehicle soft-landed on the Moon (and the last one landed there, a decade later) were strictly Made in Russia. Embarrassing and often tragic, spectacular failure also often fuels political will, without which governments accomplish nothing.  After a latter-day purge of Russia's unmanned mission contractor NPO Lavochkin, the legacy of Fobos-Grunt may help guarantee eventual success for Luna-Grunt and the other lunar missions Russia has in the works.

If all goes well, beginning next month, the United States will support five spacecraft exploring the Moon simultaneously, the most prominent among them the record-smashing LRO. Following decades of a near total neglect of its hard-won and expensive lunar legacy, America owes a revival of interest in Earth's Moon directly to the loss of Columbia in 2003.

An early priority for LRO was a survey of human artifacts on the Moon. Delivering spectacularly on that assignment were Mark Robinson, principle investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), together with his team at Arizona State University. Their most newsworthy success, quite naturally, were many high resolution history-making photographs of the relics and footprints from the Apollo program.

Fig. 2  Planitia Descentus - Latin for Plain of Descent, a human distinction for an otherwise indistinct borderland along the western edge of Oceanus Procellarum, where Luna 9 came to a tilted stop February 3, 1966.  The yellow dot on the rise at center bottom on both maps makes the location of an object that could be Luna 9. These comparative maps of the same 14,300 square kilometer area (centered near 8.48°N, 64.47°W) are (top) LROC WAC DTM  juxtaposed with (bottom) LROC WAC mosaic, each from LROC/ASU QuickMap (250 m/pp resolution). [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

A steady stream of LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) views were released during the LRO Nominal Mission revisiting the remains of a host of U.S. and Soviet spacecraft, both impact craters and the intact sentinel spacecraft themselves following hundreds of lunar days and nights. Each of these Featured Images released by LROC has fired the imagination while calibrating and confirming some very old, often incomplete sets of data.

Finding Lunokhod 1 (38.316°N, 324.996°E), for example, was an overdue accomplishment. It was the first robotic rover on another world, equipped with a laser range reflector that had eluded detection for decades. Its addition to the passive network of reflectors set up by Apollo 11, 14 and 15, together with its French-built twin on Lunokhod 2 allowed the measuring of the Earth-Moon distance to within 3 mm, the missing tolerance needed to test whether a range of physical laws were exclusive to our neighborhood in the universe.

A compendium of LRO's definitive findings, LROC Coordinates of Robotic Spacecraft, put together by Samuel Lawrence at ASU, was released April 5, 2010.

Though the list has not been updated since, it's still spectacular. For the first time, for example, anyone with an Internet connection can see precisely what happened when the third stage of the Saturn V that pushed Apollo 13 around the Moon impacted with the lunar surface. And planetary scientists have a precise date on a fresh impact crater on the Moon, as well; a standard useful for dating optical maturity and space weathering. We no longer have to imagine if the footprints are still there and decades of doubters can precisely see for themselves how the astronaut's surface photography matches the landscapes as seen only 45 (and more recently 25) kilometers away.

Still, the table put together by Lawrence can't yet be comprehensive.

A search for the place where Luna 2 became the first man-made object to impact another world in 1959, for example, is fraught with uncertainty. Those official coordinates are necessarily wide of mark, if only because the precise location of the Moon itself, and its surface, would never again be less well understood than before the Russian measured the time of impact for Luna 2.

A search for Luna 2 using those rounded-off coordinates brings the investigator west of Autolycus, to a 22 square kilometer area where there are at least two, perhaps three, fresh craters with the proper wispy signatures. One of them shows signs of a unique debris field, perhaps dotted with a cluster of the impact-resistant Soviet flag-engraved metal balls reportedly loaded on Luna-2. A surface expedition will be needed, in other words. As amazing as it is, however, even the LROC Narrow Angle Cameras have their limits.

At the very edge of those limits is Luna 9, the 99 kg.lander the Soviets succeeded in soft-landing on the Moon on February 3, 1966. In Multiple NAC footprints covering the target area uploaded to the Planetary Data System, even by April 2010, it was easy to see the LROC team had already earnestly tried to find that historic relic. But Luna 9 wasn't on the list put together by Lawrence.

Fig. 3  A closer look at the Plain of Descent.  The rectangle matches a 2.5 km-wide cross-section of LROC NAC observation M137970706R, the area seen in Figure 6a, below. The small white dot marks a spot less than a kilometer south of the rectangle, the official Luna 9 landing site, and the white dot inside the rectangle marks the location of an "object of interest," something that seems to be a Luna 9, in the two NAC observations detailed below.  The 'mid-morning' view above is a 41-km-wide field of view taken from LROC Wide Angle Camera (WAC) observation M160376850C (604 nm), LRO orbit 8769, May 18, 2011; incidence angle 55.42° with a resolution of 57.55 meters per pixel, from an altitude of 40.49 km [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

As noted expert on lunar artifacts Phil Stooke of the University of Western Ontario put it, finding the very first vehicle soft-landed on the Moon was "problematic," even with the proven sensitivity of the twin LROC Narrow Angle Cameras. 

There is lingering dispute about the true landing site, though the central difficulty in finding Luna 9 is probably the small spacecraft's low profile. Its instrument housing is barely at the half-meter limit to the LROC NAC Nominal Mission resolution. And, because discussing Luna 9 without seeing its mission in the context of the Cold War would be incomplete, a brief comparison with Surveyor, its very real competition, is necessary.

The Russians beat Americans to the Moon in 1966 by only five months. Samuel Lawrence had already written up and released LROC's first views of "Surveyor 1 - America's first soft lunar landing," on September 30, 2009. That observation (M102443995L) swept up the first U.S. lander very early in LRO's Commissioning phase, in orbit 272, when LRO was still flying at twice its Nominal mission altitude, from 102.4 km overhead. That survey of the floor of Flamsteed P was photographed at less than half of the planned LROC NAC resolution; at 1.08 meters per pixel, the Surveyor 1 tripod in profile was barely visible, identifiable mainly in its long shadow at local sunset.The Surveyor design featured a central mast with square solar panels at the top, standing high like a flag. That aided in identifying all five of the successful Surveyor landers, right they sat. 

Unlike its Google Earth icon, seen in Fig. 1, Luna 9 was not standing like an egg, balanced on one hemisphere. After its landing and activation Luna 9 was at tilted, and from slight changes in the background seen in its five photographic panoramas we can tell Luna 9 shifted slightly after deployment.

Fig. 4  Simulated oblique view west by northwest over the area of interest from a point 28 km over the western Oceanus Procellarum. After years of deconstructing the five panoramas captured and returned to Earth by Luna 9, many reliable experts have come to doubt the accuracy of the official landing site (coordinates on the left, at "-1310 m" elevation).  Some believe Luna 9 must have landed somewhere in the plain to the north (on the right, marked "-1640 m").  If the object detailed in Figures 5 and 6 below is Luna 9 then the lander came to rest at a point less than three kilometers and almost due north of the official coordinates ("-1170 m"), and at least 140 meters higher in elevation.  After studying the LROC WAC Digital Terrain Model of the area (Fig. 2) the hills, contiguous with other features surrounding the Plain of Descent, appear to be the highly degraded rim of an ancient, mostly buried crater.  -Image created using ILIADS application, developed by NASA's LMMP project; photography from LROC WAC Global Mosaic with elevations from LOLA altimetry (v.2). [NASA/GSFC/ARC/LMMP/ASU].

The low profile and squat, efficient design of Luna 9 have made it difficult to definitively locate, either somewhere in the expansive plain to the north or near the official position somewhere on a 500 meter high hill, nor on their slopes. All of the area was extensively photographed from LRO, from high altitudes and low, under high Sun and low Sun, with LRO rolled and looking down from directly overhead. If the little vehicle has been captured (which seems certain) what would distinguish its egg shape from thousands of boulders more or less the same size?

It's a safe bet Samuel Lawrence and others on the LROC team encountered this difficulty head-on, with the determination and resourcefulness of a Cold War photo-analyst pouring over U2 photographs of Cuban missile sites. 

In fact, it would be the height of presumption on our part to claim to have done anything more than retraced their steps. It's impossible to believe a candidate object we stumbled on, within their choices of photographic session, hasn't already been considered or scratched off the list. Were it not for something that may turn out to be simply an artifact of digital compression we wouldn't take another look.

Let's just say, "boy, that sure looks like Luna 9!"

What follows are two sets of images, selected from two separate LROC NAC observations, focused on an "object of interest" at sunrise (Figures 5a and 5b), when the Sun was less than 5 degrees over the east horizon, when long shadows allow for depth perception, and then (in Figures 6a - 6d) where, at less than 8° north of the equator, the Sun was high overhead and depth perception gives way to a search for subtle variations in brightness or optical maturity.

Fig. 5a   The full 2.5 kilometer-wide field from LROC NAC M132071202L orbit 4597, June 25, 2010; with resolution greatly reduced from the original 0.48 meter per pixel resolution captured from 40.49 km altitude, incidence angle 85.57°. The yellow rectangle is the area shown at full resolution in Fig. 5b, immediately below. The yellow dot is our "object of interest," so to speak, indicated with an arrow in at full resolution below. The object certainly casts a shadow, as anything with a profile would when caught in naked morning sunshine on the Moon. It is also seemingly brighter than other similarly sized objects in the roughly 238 meter-wide field of view seen below.  [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Fig. 5b  Full resolution, and very non-definitive rendition of the Object of Interest, again, from LROC NAC M132071202L The object appears to be situated within the west slope of a 10 meter crater, whose interior is very darkened with shadow. Since Luna 9 arrived on the Moon not long after local sunrise, this doesn't help identify the object as Luna 9. The larger, similarly bright object to the southwest is too large to be Luna 9, but its size and location relative to the object of interest makes a case for it being part of the larger lander bus [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

On the 500 meter hills, south of "the plain of descent," under an afternoon Sun:

Fig. 6a  Backing away once again, shifting perspective slightly to the west, with the Sun nearly overhead, this is the field of view within the rectangle back in Fig 3, and slightly west, overlapping the area in Fig. 5a, another 2.5 km-wide area taken this time from LROC NAC M137970706R, orbit 5466, September 1, 2010, from 45.57 km in altitude (incidence angle 29.64°). The area in the white rectangle is the field of view enlarged in Fig. 6b, immediately below [NASA/GSFC/Arizona Sate University].

Fig. 6b  At 40 percent of their original resolution, line 14775 to 15556 by sample 3964 - 4544 from M137970706R. (The dim dark line is an artifact "junction" between line 15000 and 15001). And, like a Russian Doll, the square box above is the roughly 290 meter-wide field of view seen at 100 percent of the original observation's 0.5 meter per pixel resolution seen in Fig. 6c, immediately below [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Fig. 6c At full resolution, lines 15001 - 15580 by sample 3964 - 4543 from LROC NAC M137970706R. Compare this with Fig. 5b, above and, once again, what is seen under differing lighting conditions on the Moon is clear. When happening upon this candidate object under a high Sun, something catches the eye [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Fig. 6d  Taking  LROC NAC M137970706R  well beyond its true limit of resolution we stumble upon what might be Luna 9, resting on the west interior slope of a shallow 10 meter crater, perhaps even afterwards sliding slightly between photographic panoramas, February 3, 1966. Under an early afternoon Sun, after being enlarged 400 percent with a super-sampling algorithm, what appear faintly as three of the spacecraft's four instrument-shielding petals (the fourth presumably in its shadow) somehow popped out from the background. No intentional fudging was done to the original brute-force enlargement (See Fig. 7) [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Fig. 7 A simple enlargement to 400 percent of the half-meter per pixel resolution native to LROC NAC observation M137970706R turned up this object, certainly an oddity if it is not Luna 9. As demonstrated in the hackneyed animated image (Fig. 6d), the object meets the profile, is barely less than 3 kilometers due north of its official landing site, about 140 meters higher in elevation, on a broader slope with presumably less obstructed horizon.

Fig. 8 The view south from Luna 9, February 3, 1966.

Using the popular open-source program Orbital Simulator, "reseferina1" created this interesting simulation of the Luna 9 mission in 1966. Though fun, it too, unfortunately, made the thing look far too easy. The originating YouTube page is HERE.