Chandrayaan 2’s lander Vikram that has gone hard landing in the past has been found now. The US space agency reported that the ISRO’s moon-orbiting spacecraft has found the debris of Vikram on the Moon surface.
On September 7, Indian Space Research Organisation attempted a soft landing of Vikram on the Moon. But it lost contact with the lander and the mission was failed leaving Indians in deep sorrow.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Camera team released the first mosaic on September 26th. Indian Engineer Shanmuga Subramanian contacted NASA’s project and after comparing the before and after images, the US space agency has confirmed the identification of lander debris.
Also read: Chandrayaan 2: Vikram lander location identified, but!
NASA later released a statement that reads, “After receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images. When the images for the first mosaic were acquired the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily identifiable.”
The debris located by the Indian techie is about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site and was a single bright pixel identification in that first mosaic. ISRO made numerous attempts to locate Vikram with LRO. India would have been the fourth country after the US, China and Russia, if at all it succeeded in landing Vikram on Moon.