WASHINGTON – India’s Vikram lunar lander, which crashed on its finalapproach to the Moon’s surface in September, has been found thanks in partto the sleuthing efforts of an amateur space enthusiast.
NASA made the announcement on Monday, releasing an image taken by its LunarReconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that showed the site of the spacecraft’simpact (September 7 in India and September 6 in the US).
A version of the picture was marked up to show the associated debris field,with parts scattered over almost two dozen locations spanning severalkilometers.
In a statement, NASA said it released a mosaic image of the site onSeptember 26 (but taken on September 17), inviting the public to compare itwith images of the same area before the crash to find signs of the lander.
The first person to come up with a positive identification was Shanmuga”Shan” Subramanian, a 33-year-old IT professional from Chennai, who toldAFP that NASA’s inability to find the lander on its own had sparked hisinterest.
“I had side-by-side comparison of those two images on two of my laptops…on one side there was the old image, and another side there was the newimage released by NASA,” he said, adding he was helped by fellow Twitterand Reddit users.
“It was quite hard, but (I) spent some effort,” said the self-professedspace nerd, finally announcing his discovery on Twitter on October 3.
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NASA then performed additional searches in the area and officiallyannounced the finding almost two months later.
“NASA has to be 100% sure before they can go public, and that’s the reasonthey waited to confirm it, and even I would have done the same,” saidSubramanian.
Blasting off in July, emerging Asian giant India had hoped with itsChandrayaan-2 (“Moon Vehicle 2”) mission to become just the fourth countryafter the United States, Russia and regional rival China to make asuccessful Moon landing, and the first on the lunar south pole.
The main spacecraft, which remains in orbit around the Moon, dropped theunmanned lander Vikram for a descent that would take five days, but theprobe went silent just 2.1 kilometers above the surface.
Days after the failed landing, the Indian Space Research Organization saidit had located the lander, but hadn’t been able to establish communication.-APP/AFP
