NASA's Lunar Orbiter May Have Spotted Long-Lost Luna 9 Spacecraft, 60 Years After It Vanished - IFLScience

Currently, about 16,000 satellites are orbiting Earth, providing everything from GPS service and weather reports to phone service in remote locations to people across the globe. In contrast, the highest-ever number of active satellites in orbit around Mars, one of the best-explored other planets in our solar system, is eight.

Robert Wagner, an image-processing specialist from Intuitive Machines working with LRO camera data, spotted the anomaly on October 24, 2025, during a routine quality check. Automated software designed to flag surface changes between orbital passes highlighted a distinct shift in wide-angle imagery. While most flagged variations turn out to be false alarms caused by shifting light and shadow, Wagner investigated the signal directly. The feature’s bright ejecta pattern and surrounding disturbance were consistent with a recent impact. Following the verification, the team used LRO’s high-resolution Narrow-Angle Camera to obtain follow-up images at roughly meter-scale resolution. The crater formed on the Moon’s eastern edge when a fragment from an asteroid or comet, estimated to be roughly three to six stories tall, struck the surface. Named in honor of late lunar scientist Thomas McGetchin, the crater carved  into the regolith and hurled debris across the landscape. The strike excavated soil and spread bright ejecta across the surrounding area.

A routine check of NASA lunar data unexpectedly led to a major discovery. Robert Wagner, a scientist who works with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), was examining a large map of the Moon when something unusual stood out on his computer screen. He noticed an unusually bright patch surrounded by a dark halo, a pattern suggesting that material on the lunar surface had recently been disturbed.

A zoomed-in view of the Moon made from images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. (More information at the bottom of article.) It started as a routine data-quality check. But as Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scanned a giant Moon map on his computer screen, an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo caught his eye, as it implied that surface material in that area had been shaken up.