Home Latest News Still No Trace of Missing Indian Moon Lander: NASA

Still No Trace of Missing Indian Moon Lander: NASA

by AFP

Indian Space Research Organization Chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan holds up a model of the Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft. Manjunath Kiran—AFP

U.S. space agency says its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will next pass over landing site in October for another look

A NASA satellite orbiting the Moon passed over the site where the Indian probe Vikram should have made touchdown earlier this month, but didn’t see the missing lander, the U.S. space agency said.

The announcement was made on Thursday after NASA released photographs taken on Sept. 17 by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the plains located about 600 kilometers from the Moon’s south pole, which is where Vikram aimed to land.

“So far the… team has not been able to locate or image the lander,” NASA said. “It was dusk when the landing area was imaged and thus large shadows covered much of the terrain; it is possible that the Vikram lander is hiding in a shadow,” the space agency added, saying the LRO will pass over the site again in October, when the light will be better.

Blasting off in July, the emerging Asian giant had hoped with its Chandrayaan-2 (“Moon Vehicle 2”) mission to become just the fourth country after the United States, Russia and regional rival China to make a successful moon landing, and the first on the lunar south pole. The main spacecraft, which remains in orbit around the Moon, dropped the unmanned lander Vikram for a descent that would take five days, but the probe went silent just 2.1 kilometers above the surface.

Vikram was traveling at a horizontal speed of 157 feet per second and descending 197 feet per second, just over half a mile from the landing point, according to U.S.-based organization The Planetary Society.

Days after the failed landing, the Indian Space Research Organization said it had located the lander, but hadn’t been able to establish communication. It has been trying to contact Vikram since.

However, NASA in its statement said “Vikram had a hard landing,” which is aviation jargon meaning it crashed.

Related Articles

3 comments

Syed Wall Mujtaba September 28, 2019 - 4:33 pm

The moon is not ready to welcome butcher Indian Lander due to non stop torture and killing of innocent Kashmiris and Muslims,dalats in Occupied Kashmir /in India.

Reply
Scorpion September 29, 2019 - 11:06 am

It never did happen in the first place. All that talk about dusk and other things relating to light, i thought it was supposed to be on the dark side . These indian toys were no good in the first place they need to stop this nonsense and concentrate on building toilets and other necessities before soending on useless projects which dont have any returns

Reply
Subrato Roy September 30, 2019 - 12:29 pm

It seems to be crash land, diverted from its path causing stray reporting.

Reply

Leave a Comment