For thousands of years, the moon inspired humans from afar, but the bright beacon in Earth’s night sky — located more than 321,868 kilometres away — remained out of reach.

That all changed on September 13, 1959, when the former Soviet Union’s uncrewed spacecraft, Luna 2, landed on the moon’s surface.

The Luna 2 probe created a crater when it touched down on the moon between the lunar regions of Mare Imbrium and Mare Serenitatis, according to NASA .

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Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. (NASA)

That pivotal, lunar dust-stirring moment signalled the beginning of humanity’s endeavours to explore the moon, and some scientists now suggest it was also the start of a new geological epoch — or period of time in history — called the “Lunar Anthropocene,” according to a paper in journal Nature Geoscience .

“The idea is much the same as the discussion of the Anthropocene on Earth — the exploration of how much humans have impacted our planet,” said the paper’s lead author Justin Holcomb, a postdoctoral researcher with the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas.

“The consensus is on Earth the Anthropocene began at some point in the past, whether hundreds of thousands of years ago or in the 1950s,” Holcomb said.

“Similarly, on the moon, we argue the Lunar Anthropocene already has commenced, but we want to prevent massive damage or a delay of its recognition until we can measure a significant lunar halo caused by human activities, which would be too late.”

Scientists have tried for years to declare a definitive Anthropocene on Earth, and recently presented new evidence of a site in Canada that some researchers believe marks the start of the transformative chapter in our planet’s history.

The idea of the Lunar Anthropocene arrives at a time when civil space agencies and commercial entities are showing a renewed interest in returning to the moon, or for some, landing on it for the first time.

And the paper’s authors argue that the moon’s environment, already shaped by humans during the beginning of the Lunar Anthropocene, will be altered in more drastic ways as exploration increases.

Humanity’s lunar footprint

Outdoor enthusiasts and visitors to national parks are likely familiar with the concept of “Leave No Trace” — respecting and maintaining natural environments, leaving things the way they were found and properly disposing of waste.

The moon, however, is littered with the traces of exploration.

Since Luna 2’s landing, more than a hundred spacecraft have crashed and made soft landings on the moon and “humans have caused surface disturbances in at least 58 additional locations on the lunar surface,” according to the paper.

Touching down on the lunar surface is incredibly difficult, as evidenced by numerous crashes that have made their mark and created new craters.

An astronaut’s boot left an impression on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. (NASA / JSC)

The Cold War space race kicked off a series of lunar missions, and the majority since then have been uncrewed.

NASA’s Apollo missions were the first to send humans around the moon during the 1960s before safely landing astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time in 1969 with Apollo 11.

Ultimately, 12 NASA astronauts walked on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972.

With the arrival of humans came a plethora of objects that have been left behind, including scientific equipment for experiments, spacecraft components, flags, photographs, and even golf balls, bags of human excrement and religious texts.

From Earth, the moon appears unchanged.

After all, it doesn’t have a protective atmosphere or magnetosphere like our life-sustaining world does.

Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan drove a lunar roving vehicle on the moon’s surface during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. It’s still on the moon more than 50 years later. (NASA / JSC)

On February 6, 1971, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard hit the first golf stroke on the Moon. (AP)

Micrometeorites regularly hit the surface because the moon has no way of shielding itself from space rocks.

Declaring a Lunar Anthropocene could make it clear that the moon is changing in ways it wouldn’t naturally due to human exploration, the researchers said.

“Cultural processes are starting to outstrip the natural background of geological processes on the moon,” Holcomb said.

“These processes involve moving sediments, which we refer to as ‘regolith,’ on the moon. Typically, these processes include meteoroid impacts and mass movement events, among others. However, when we consider the impact of rovers, landers and human movement, they significantly disturb the regolith.”

The moon also has features like a delicate exosphere composed of dust and gas and ice inside permanently shadowed areas that are vulnerable and could be disturbed by continued explorations, the authors wrote in their paper.

“Future missions must consider mitigating deleterious effects on lunar environments.”

Lunar exploration frenzy

A new space race is heating up as multiple countries set their sights on landing both robotic and crewed missions to explore the moon’s south pole and other unexplored and difficult-to-reach lunar regions.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission made a historic successful landing on the moon in 2023 after Russia’s Luna 25 spacecraft and Japanese company Ispace’s ‎HAKUTO-R lander both crashed.

This year, multiple missions are heading for the moon, including Japan’s “Moon Sniper” lander that is expected to attempt to touch down on January 19.

Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine spacecraft launched this week amid objections by the Navajo Nation that the vehicle carried human remains that customers paid to send to the lunar surface, sparking fresh debate over who controls the moon.

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NASA astronaut James Irwin stands next to a rover on the surface of the moon in 1971. (AP / NASA)

Humanity has left its mark on the moon in many ways, including impact craters left by spacecraft, lunar rover tracks, astronaut boot prints, science experiments and even family photos brought by astronauts. (NASA / GSFC / ASU)

But a propulsion issue noticed hours after liftoff means that Peregrine won’t be able to attempt a moon landing, and currently, its fate is uncertain.

NASA’s Artemis program intends to return humans to the lunar surface in 2026.

The agency’s ambitions include establishing a sustained human presence on the moon, with habitats that are supported by resources like water ice at the lunar south pole.

China’s space ambitions also include landing on the moon.

“In the context of the new space race, the lunar landscape will be entirely different in 50 years,” Holcomb said.

“Multiple countries will be present, leading to numerous challenges. Our goal is to dispel the lunar-static myth and emphasise the importance of our impact, not only in the past but ongoing and in the future. We aim to initiate discussions about our impact on the lunar surface before it’s too late.”

The moon’s archaeological record

Humanity’s traces on the moon have come to be viewed as artifacts that essentially need some form of protection.

Researchers have long expressed a desire to maintain the Apollo landing sites and catalog the items left behind to preserve “space heritage.”

But this type of preservation is difficult to pull off because no one country or entity “owns” the moon.

“A recurring theme in our work is the significance of lunar material and footprints on the moon as valuable resources, akin to an archaeological record that we’re committed to preserving,” Holcomb said.

“The concept of a Lunar Anthropocene aims to raise awareness and contemplation regarding our impact on the lunar surface, as well as our influence on the preservation of historical artifacts.”

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Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt walks near a massive rock on the moon in 1972, in what was the final mission of NASA’s Apollo program. (NASA)

The Apollo 11 lunar landing marked the first time humans set foot on another world.

The footprints left in the lunar dust by astronauts are perhaps the most emblematic of humanity’s ongoing journey, which will likely include planets like Mars in the future, the researchers said.

“As archaeologists, we perceive footprints on the moon as an extension of humanity’s journey out of Africa, a pivotal milestone in our species’ existence,” Holcomb said.

“These imprints are intertwined with the overarching narrative of evolution.

On 23 August, India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission landed a spacecraft near the south pole of the Moon. The lander, Vikram, and an accompanying rover collected valuable data from the lunar surface for nearly 2 weeks until they were powered down to wait out the lunar night. (Engineers have been trying to reestablish contact since 22 September.)

But the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission was far from ensured. Just a few days earlier, Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed trying to land in the same region. In fact, a spate of recent lunar missions have ended in failure.

To better understand what can go wrong with a lunar mission, scientists and the public alike have pored over data collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to pinpoint the precise locations of recent crashes. They’ve spotted clear evidence of several spacecraft landing not so gently on our nearest celestial neighbor.

All of the Moon, Every Month

Since 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been returning a treasure trove of data about the Moon’s topography, mineralogy, and water resources. The truck-sized orbiter is currently cruising roughly 100 kilometers above the surface of the Moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera—actually a suite of cameras consisting of two Narrow Angle Cameras and one Wide Angle Camera—images most of the lunar surface every month.

Data from the Narrow Angle Cameras are particularly valuable for spotting minute changes in the Moon’s landscape over time, said Robert Wagner, a planetary geologist at Arizona State University in Tempe and a member of the LRO team. “It’s great for finding small features,” he said. The Narrow Angle Cameras return some of the highest-resolution imagery of the Moon’s surface collected to date from orbit—each pixel corresponds to roughly 50 centimeters.

And Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera data aren’t used by just professional scientists: About every 90 days, a trove of new data are released to the public. (The 55th data release occurred on 15 September.) Thousands of unique users access the observations in a typical month, said Nick Estes, the Science Operations Center manager of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera at Arizona State University in Phoenix. “[They’re] definitely in use out there,” he said.

Shanmuga Subramanian, a mechanical engineer in Chennai, India, and a space afficionado, is one such person. In 2019, Subramanian learned that India’s space agency had lost contact with an earlier Vikram. The lander, which was roughly the size of a desk, had been slated to touch down on the Moon as part of the country’s Chandrayaan-2 mission. Subramanian had experience working with computer code, and he knew about the high-resolution images of the Moon’s surface captured by the LRO. Perhaps those data could be used to pinpoint Vikram’s crash site, Subramanian hypothesized.

A Meticulous Search

“We had at least half a dozen people here in the office going through a large pile of little before-after blink images I had made.”

Subramanian downloaded an image obtained by the LRO on 17 September 2019, 10 days after Vikram’s purported crash. He compared it with images of the same region taken months earlier. Subramanian was looking for minute changes in the 2- × 2-kilometer images—anything that might correspond to debris from the 600-kilogram lander or a crater excavated by its crash. It was labor-intensive work, Subramanian said. “I started searching pixel by pixel.”

Combined before and after images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show a halo of disturbed soil on the Moon’s surface around the dark impact site. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

But his meticulous sleuthing paid off: After about 2 days of searching, Subramanian noticed one anomalously bright pixel in the 17 September image that was conspicuously absent in the earlier images. “It was a very tiny little white speck,” Subramanian said. He alerted the LRO team, who started searching in the same vicinity. Wagner, who often helps with processing LRO data, assembled pairs of images obtained before and after Vikram’s crash and enlisted the help of his colleagues. “We had at least half a dozen people here in the office going through a large pile of little before-after blink images I had made,” Wagner said.

The team confirmed Subramanian’s discovery and identified more than 10 additional pieces of debris strewn over an area of roughly 5 square kilometers. Subramanian’s tip was instrumental in finding Vikram, Wagner said, and the mechanical engineer was duly credited in NASA’s announcement that the lander had been spotted.

Missing Lander? Call LRO

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera data have also revealed the final resting places of other crippled spacecraft.

Israel’s Beresheet lander was attempting to land in the Sea of Serenity on 11 April 2019 when personnel at the mission’s command center in Yehud lost contact with the spacecraft. Images captured by the LRO 11 days after the purported crash revealed the impact site. The imagery showed that the roughly washing machine–sized lander had struck the rim of a small crater in a hard landing and excavated a roughly 100-meter-long swath of lunar regolith.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the impact site of Israel’s Beresheet lander. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Earlier this year, Japan’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander also crashed on the Moon. The lander, designed and built by the company ispace, would have been the first private spacecraft to land on the Moon. On 26 April, 1 day after mission control in Tokyo lost communications with the lander, the LRO team acquired several images around the spacecraft’s intended landing site near Atlas crater. By comparing those images with data taken previously, the team homed in on what appeared to be at least four pieces of debris scattered around a roughly 50- × 100-meter site.

Letters and arrows highlight visible surface changes on the Moon imaged by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter after the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander crash. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

And when Russia’s Luna-25 hit the Moon on 19 August—just a few days before the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3—LRO once again played a starring role in pinpointing the crash site. Estes, the Science Operations Center manager, noticed something that resembled a fresh impact in data collected 5 days after the crash. The feature was enough of a visual oddity that he first spotted it without having to compare with before-crash imagery. “I saw something that looked plausible,” he said.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery shows a fresh impact feature presumed to be from Russia’s Luna-25 lander. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

The LRO team later confirmed Estes’s discovery and determined that Luna-25 had crashed roughly 400 kilometers away from its intended landing site. The impact excavated a crater roughly 10 meters in diameter that showed up in LRO data as a brighter-than-normal spot. “It was this very, very spectacular brightness change,” Wagner said. “Once we did a ratio between the before and after images, it just popped out as this spray pattern of ejecta.”

After 14 years, the LRO’s data archive now includes more than a petabyte’s worth of observations and accompanying metadata, Estes said. And just this year NASA launched an interactive app featuring LRO data. Scientists and the public can compare observations of the Moon made in the 1960s by five NASA spacecraft that orbited the Moon and more recent LRO imagery to spot changes in the lunar surface.

—Katherine Kornei (@KatherineKornei), Contributing Writer

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Citation: Kornei, K. (2023), A lunar mission spots its failed brethren, Eos, 104, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EO230374. Published on 3 October 2023.

Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City (streaming now on Peacock), centers on a fictional play inside of a fictional movie, which takes place in the fictional town of Asteroid City. There, a crater left by a meteor impact draws a curious collection of people including an honest-to-Crom space alien. Wherever you find a new crater, there’s usually a good story to go along with it.

Any residents of the Moon’s South Pole might have had their own cinematic call to adventure on August 19, when the Russian lunar lander Luna-25 unexpectedly crashed during descent.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Find’s Luna-25 Impact Site

The mission would have returned Russia to the Moon for the first time since the original space race. It would also have made them the first to soft land at the Moon’s South Pole, an area of particular interest thanks to stores of frozen water. Instead, their first lunar mission in half a century failed at the finish line when an anomaly sent the craft careening into the Moon at high speed.

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Two days after the Russian space agency Roscosmos lost contact with Luna-25, they published an estimated point of impact. NASA scientists on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) team then directed the orbiting craft to snap new images of the area. Then they compared those new images with historical images of the same area.

This GIF alternates between LRO views from June 27, 2020, and Aug. 24, 2023 – before and after the appearance of a new impact crater likely from Russia’s Luna 25 mission. Photo: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

Right away, they found a fresh crater in approximately at the spot Roscosmos estimated. Estimates put the crater’s diameter at approximately 10 meters across and located roughly 400 kilometers from Luna-25’s planned landing site.

Importantly, the most recent images of the area were more than a year old, taken in June of 2022. With that in mind, all we can know for certain is that something created a new crater between June 2022 and August 24, 2023, when the new images were taken. That said, given the proximity with where we know Luna-25 went down, it’s likely the crater was caused by the crash.

It’s not the result Russia wanted, but every accidental crater is evidence of humanity’s enduring exploratory spirit. As Wayne Gretzky once sort of said, you miss 100% of the future craters you don’t launch, or something.

Catch Asteroid City, streaming now on Peacock!