Another Soviet moon buggy spotted

Powered by solar/nuclear energy, the rover was happily going about its business while NASA was landing Apollo 14 and 15.

The Lunokhod carried a French-made reflector unit, intended to help with measurements of the moon and its orbit, which should have meant that the defunct rover could be easily located from Earth.

However the Soviet operators had only a sketchy notion where their craft actually was at any given time and in fact since Lunokhod 1 went off-line nobody has known exactly where it finished up.

The reflector doesn't perform well enough for Earthly astronomers to pick up sunlight from it, and the alternative technique - beaming a laser from Earth at the rover and looking for the reflected light - requires that one have a fairly close idea where it is in order to aim the laser.

Salvation came last month, when NASA released a tranche of detailed orbital photos of the Mare Imbrium, taken by its new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite as it made repeated passes just 30 miles above the surface.

With these, it was possible to finally get a decent idea where the lost Lunokhod and its parent lander were.

Using the 3.5m telescope at Apache Point in New Mexico, scientists were able at last to get a laser reflection back from the missing moon-prowler, getting its range to within a centimetre.

Lunokhod 1's successor, Lunokhod 2 - nowadays the property of wealthy game developer and space tourist Richard Garriott - was also recently relocated with the aid of LRO photographs.

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