As humanity pushes ahead with a crewed moon mission for the first time in half a century, a long-lost Soviet probe has been found on the moon after 60 years. Following British and Japanese researchers, a report from Russia said traces were found of an object believed to be Luna 9. There is hope that spacecraft now orbiting the moon or the United States' Artemis 2, which will carry astronauts to the moon next month, could capture its actual appearance.
On Feb. 3, 1966, the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft Luna 9 made the first soft landing on the moon in human history. Luna 9 was the 12th spacecraft in the Soviet Union's second-generation lunar program, Ye-6. It not only achieved a soft landing after 11 failed attempts out of 12 launches, but also set a record by sending back the first photographs of the surface of an extraterrestrial body. But contact with Luna 9 was lost immediately after landing, and it has not been found to this day.
◇ AI trained on Apollo data points to Luna 9 landing site
Just as archaeologists on Earth search for relics left by ancestors, scientists are also hunting for spacecraft and equipment that went to the moon or Mars and then vanished. They are space archaeologists. Although Soviet media at the time disclosed Luna 9's landing site, neither Earth-based telescopes nor orbiters circling the moon were able to find it. Space archaeologists, after a shift in thinking and persistent tracking, located an object believed to be Luna 9.
Lewis Pinault, a professor at the Centre for Planetary Sciences at University College London (UCL), and Hajime Yano at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Institute of Space and Astronautical Science took a different approach from previous studies. They used artificial intelligence (AI) instead of people. The team modified a machine-learning algorithm designed to identify micrometeorites in astronomical images so it would find artificial objects in photos of the lunar surface.
In a paper released last month in the international journal npj Space Exploration, the team said AI, after learning from images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of past Apollo landing sites, discovered the landing site of Luna 16 in previously unanalyzed images.
Sixty years ago, the Soviet newspaper Pravda reported Luna 9's landing coordinates as 7.13 degrees north, 64.37 degrees west. After scanning a 5-kilometer-by-5-kilometer area around that site, AI detected signals suggesting artificial objects at 7.03 degrees north, 64.33 degrees west. In addition to an object believed to be the descent module, several objects were found together within about 100 to 200 meters. The team said this arrangement matches Luna 9's actual landing process.
◇ First photos sent from the surface of an extraterrestrial body
Scientists thought the area where Luna 9 fired its retrorockets during landing would show different light reflectance from its surroundings because dust on the surface would have been blown away. The LRO, which went to the moon in 2009, orbited at an altitude of 50 kilometers and photographed the surface with a camera able to resolve objects 0.5 meters across. Analyzing the imagery, researchers successively found traces of the Apollo missions. But they could not find Luna 9. Introducing AI this time reaffirmed that detecting artificial objects through differences in albedo was the right approach.
Although Luna 9 was a large spacecraft 2.7 meters tall and weighing 1.5 tons, the only element that ultimately operated on the surface was a small spherical capsule 58 centimeters in diameter and weighing 100 kilograms. The Luna 9 lander cut its engine about 5 meters above the surface and released the capsule. The lander itself struck the moon at 22 kph, but the mission capsule did not suffer a major shock. It was ejected in the opposite direction just before touchdown, and airbags around the body inflated to absorb the impact.
After bouncing several times, the Luna 9 capsule came to rest in the Oceanus Procellarum region. Inside the capsule were a radio communications system, program device, battery, thermal control system, and radiation detector. The capsule bounced like a ball on the lunar surface, then stopped and unfolded petal-shaped body panels. The 430-kilogram landing module crashed nearby.
Luna 9 had no solar panels like those used today and operated on batteries for only three days. During that time, it transmitted panoramic photos of the landing area and measured radiation. Scientists then thought the moon's surface was a deep sea of dust, but Luna 9 proved the ground was firm.
◇ Russian science journalist finds it by hand
Vitaly Egorov, a Russian science communicator, also said on the 4th on Teletype, a U.S. blogging site, that he had located Luna 9's landing site. He said that after searching within a 50-kilometer radius around the landing site released by Soviet media, he found an image believed to be Luna 9 at 7.86 degrees north, 63.86 degrees west.
Egorov previously worked at the private space company Dauria Aerospace. He now writes about the space industry under the pen name Zelenyikot, which means "green cat." In 2013, Egorov found the Soviet Mars 3 lander in imagery taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Mars 3 was a Soviet unmanned Mars probe launched on May 28, 1971, and on Dec. 2 of the same year it made the first soft landing on the Martian surface.
Egorov found Luna 9 through human persistence and terrain analysis rather than AI. He reanalyzed four panoramic photos of the surface taken by Luna 9 in 1966, capturing hills on the horizon and bright soil that was the fresh mark of a recent impact crater. By precisely comparing LRO-generated 3D terrain data with distinctive features in the panoramas, he calculated where Luna 9 should be. In other words, he analyzed the three-dimensional terrain of the landscape in the photos to locate where the photographer was standing.
Egorov found two small impact marks left by the crash of Luna 9's flight module, 116 meters apart, and nearby he spotted a tiny dot believed to be the Luna 9 capsule. The site Egorov claims as Luna 9's location is about 25 kilometers from the official coordinates released by Soviet media.
The landing site Egorov found differs from the one proposed earlier by British and Japanese scientists. Which one is correct—or whether both are wrong—must be confirmed by further investigation. Egorov conveyed the newly found coordinates to scientists planning to image the area next month with India's lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2.
"The resolution of Chandrayaan-2's camera is 0.25 meters, so in theory it can identify the shape of the spacecraft," he said. "The main body will appear as one pixel, and the four petal-shaped antennas will each appear as separate pixels." Egorov said satellites of private corporations equipped with high-resolution optical instruments could also help. For example, Firefly Aerospace in the United States is planning a lunar satellite with advanced imaging capabilities.
NASA's LRO is also expected to verify the candidate landing sites for Luna 9. In their January paper, the British and Japanese scientists said, "AI machine learning efficiently separates statistically significant anomalies, but domain expertise is still essential for physical interpretation and verification," adding, "To confirm Luna 9, the LRO needs to reimage the area." However, the Artemis 2 mission will operate at high altitude and approach the far side of the moon, so observing Luna 9 is likely to be difficult.
Egorov has been living in exile abroad since last year. He was designated a foreign agent by the Russian authorities for activities opposing the war in Ukraine. He argued that Russia should spend money on peaceful space exploration rather than war.
Egorov looks forward to the day when the achievements of space archaeology lead to space tourism, just as people visit archaeological sites excavated on Earth. "Someday, people may follow guides to visit the very place where humanity first set foot on the moon," he said. Wouldn't space tourism be far cooler than war?
npj Space Exploration (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44453-025-00020-x
Teletype (2026), https://teletype.in/@zelenyikot/luna9found