NASA tries to find traces of the "moon-9"

The experts at the American space Agency (NASA) in conjunction with the Amateur-astronomer announced the start of an interesting project in which they will try to find the landing "Luna-9". 1st spacecraft that landed on the surface of Earth's natural satellite will be to search for photos from the LRO probe.

"We want to make a grid of photo surface that covers the presumed landing site of the "moon-9", and carefully analyze each of them hoping to discover something. Remembering that the aircraft was landing using the thrusters, I hope to find a dark or light spot which they had left on the surface," announced Jeffrey Plescia from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (United States).

According to planetary scientists, "Luna-9" is considered extremely significant for the history of space exploration and the space race 1 object. This probe, launched into space, on 31 January 1966 and landed on the moon on 3 February 1966 in coordinates in to 7.13 degrees North latitude and 64,37 degrees West longitude, in the area of the crater Hevelius, marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Earth satellite.

As informs a portal Space.com photo of this point, obtained using ground-based and orbiting telescopes, as well as subsequent lunar probe, failed to approve that the probe landed exactly there. According to NASA, this is because the Russian engineers and scientists have made a typo when originally entering coordinates on map images transferred "Luna-9" on the Ground, indicate that he landed on the plain and not on the edge of the crater.

Apparently, the probe villages to the North or East of this point, in the vicinity of one of the craters on the podium. This theory the science team NASA plans to test using images from the LRO probe. With all of this, scientists are not fully convinced that they will be able to find traces of the "moon-9", however they intend to try to uncover the story of the first stages of the space race between the USSR and the USA.

sections: Society, World News