Picture : Twitter / ANI
In a stunning revelation NASA’s Moon-orbiting spacecraft has found the debris of Chandrayaan 2’s lander Vikram on the surface of the Moon.
The United States space agency confirmed in a report by PTI, nearly three months after India’s ambitious mission made a hard landing near the uncharted lunar south pole.
On September 7, Indian Space Research Organisation attempted a soft landing of Vikram on the Moon. However, ISRO lost contact with Vikram shortly before the scheduled touchdown.
Indian Engineer Shanmuga Subramanian contacted NASA’s project after which, the US space agency confirmed the identification of debris by comparing before and after images.
#WATCH “I was able to find something out of the ordinary in a particular spot,so,I thought this must be the debris;This should inspire lot of people,”S Subramanian,an amateur astronomer from Chennai who has discovered debris of Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram Lander on surface of the moon pic.twitter.com/BuLeQzKIkP
— ANI (@ANI) December 3, 2019
“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,” NASA said in a statement.
The two subsequent image sequences were acquired on October 14 and 15, and on November 11, NASA said.
The LROC team scoured the surrounding area in these new mosaics and found the impact site (70.8810 degrees South, 22.7840 degrees East) and associated debris field.
According to NASA, the November mosaic had the best pixel scale (0.7 metre) and lighting conditions (72 degrees incidence angle).
