US Space Agency NASA failed to locate India's Vikram lunar lander
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WASHINGTON - US space agency Nasa has once again failed to locate India's Vikram lunar lander. A Nasa spacecraft took photos of the landing site of the Chandrayaan-2 lander earlier this month, but the images do not show the lander.
A Nasa scientist said this could be because the Vikram lander is lying in a shadowed part of the Moon or because the Chandrayaan-2 lander is located outside the area the US space agency photographed.
Vikram lander lost contact with Earth during its descent on to the lunar surface on September 7 link. Despite several attempts to re-establish communication, the Chandrayaan-2 lander remained out of touch. Vikram is likely dead after having gone through a cold lunar night during which its instruments would have frozen out of operation link, India today has reported.
Ever since the Indian Space Research Organisation lost contact with Vikram, Nasa has made two attempts to locate the Chandrayaan-2 lander with the help of its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.The LRO flew over Vikram's landing site once on September 17 and next on October 14.
On both occasions, the LRO took photos of the landing site. However, analysis of the images failed to locate Vikram on the Moon's surface.
