A Soviet Ghost on the Moon: NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Spots Possible Remains of a Cold War-Era Lander That Never Came Home

A Soviet Ghost on the Moon: NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Spots Possible Remains of a Cold War-Era Lander That Never Came Home

More than half a century after the Soviet Union’s ambitious lunar program quietly faded into the annals of Cold War history, a NASA spacecraft circling the Moon may have found what remains of one of Moscow’s most secretive failed missions. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has captured images that researchers believe could show the wreckage of Luna 23, a Soviet sample-return mission that reached the lunar surface in 1974 but never comple…