AI Identifies Historic Luna-9 Landing Site Precisely

Researchers led by SETI affiliate Lewis Pinault publish a Feb 11, 2026 npj Space Exploration study using a lightweight ML system, YOLO-ETA, to scan lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery across a 5-by-5-kilometre area near the estimated Luna-9 coordinates. The algorithm repeatedly detected clustered objects whose terrain and horizon match Luna-9’s 1966 surface panoramas, a suggestive but not definitive identification.