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Lost Soviet Moon Lander May Have Been Found

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/science/luna-9-moon-lander-soviet.html

27•Brajeshwar•4d ago

Comments

moebrowne•4d ago

https://archive.is/pqiyD

fireflymetavrse•1h ago

The word "lost" is a little bit confusing in this context. It successfully landed and operated several days, but it's location was only approximated.

We've seen landers in recent years that crashed unintentionally in precise known locations. Does this mean that they were not lost?

newsclues•47m ago

Lost can be not knowing where something is or to no longer have it.

ggm•37m ago

"Lost at sea" and "lost with all hands" exemplifying a ship sinking, precision to place is neither denied nor supplied.

It's a net loss to the fleet, the shareholders and the insurer. And of course wives and children.

clort•39m ago

Yes. Generally, if you know where it is, it is not lost. If you don't then it is.

But, it also depends if you want to know where it is. If you don't know where something is and don't want to, its not lost its discarded.

ultratalk•33m ago

Another usage of the word "lost" is to indicate when the spacecraft has become dysfunctional. Although, that one is the verb form, not the adjective.

bloak•34m ago

Yes, the word "lost" is ambiguous, but I didn't even notice the ambiguity until you pointed it out. I think the presence of the word "found" in the same sentence lead me to assume the "unknown location" sense rather than the "destroyed" sense.

Animats•41m ago

Someday, someone, or some robot, will find it and ship it back, for museum display.

CobrastanJorji•20m ago

Assuming we have reached a point in time where it makes sense to do that, it may be that it makes more sense to put it in a museum on the moon.

Cthulhu_•3m ago

How come there's not more sattelites around the moon taking high resolution, high zoom photos to for example find this object? We can see beachball-sized objects on consumer-available photos (e.g. google maps/earth), and that's from over 100 km up through an atmosphere. I guess the answer is "nobody paid for it" but still.

There's google maps for the moon (https://www.google.com/maps/space/moon) but I'm not sure what resolution that is.