Never forgotten! The last image from Lunokhod 2 (EDM)

The two Lunokhods showed the value of robotic explorers on the Surface of another World. It would have taken another 24 years before the next robotic rover, Sojourner, drove on another World - this time Mars.
The LROC Science Operations Center received an unexpected Visitor: Ruslan Kuzmin. He was one of the scientists who had actually participated in the Lunokhod missions! We were able to show him LROC pictures of the hardware on the Surface and he was gracious enough to write down some of his thoughts upon seeing his "Old Friends".

"Thank you very much for showing me the excellent LROC images of the Lander platform from Luna-21, as well as the robotic Lunar Rover “Lunokhod-2” in its last and eternal parking place after a 37-Km, 4 month journey of research. To see the images with Lunokhod-2 and its tracks on the Lunar Surface is a very special feeling for me. In the time of the Lunokhod-2 operation, I was a young planetologist who was participating in the mission, and I analyzed the images received by the Rover’s TV- cameras. In fact, this was the first successful mission in which I was involved. It was many years ago (52 now!) when the Lunokhod-2 traveled for four months within the Crater Le-Monier at the eastern edge of the Mare Serenitatis.

While looking at LROC images of the Lunokhod-2 rover, I felt a deep interior excitement due to the welled up memories of the earliest “pages” of my science career. It is very exciting that the Lunokhod-2, as well as many other American and Soviet Union Landers, which operated many tens of years ago, now might be imaged by LROC so clearly and viewed by millions of people around the world. The LRO camera is without any doubt a really fantastic instrument that simultaneously brings our eyes close to the Lunar Surface, while reminding us of pioneering results from Historical Missions".