NASA finds Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander debris, releases images

NASA on Tuesday found the debris of Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan2 and released images of its impact site on the Moon where the spacecraft had lost communication moments before making a soft landing on the far side of the lunar surfaceThe NASA posted images clicked by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LRO Camera showing the sites changes on the Moon and the impact point before and after the spacecraft had made a hardlanding on the lunar surfaceIt also indicated the impact spot of the lander and an associated debris field created by the crash with blue and green dots respectivelyGreen dots indicate spacecraft debris confirmed or likely Blue dots locate disturbed soil likely where small bits of the spacecraft churned up the regolith S indicates debris identified by Shanmuga Subramanian the statement said without elaborating Subramanians identityShanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with positive identification of debris After receiving this tip the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images it addedThe Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team released the first mosaic acquired on September 17 of the site on September 26 and many people have downloaded the mosaic to search for signs of Vikram When the images for the first mosaic were acquired the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily identifiable Two subsequent image sequences were acquired on October 14 and 15 and on November 11 The LROC team scoured the surrounding area in these new mosaics and found the impact site and associated debris field the statement continuedThe debris first located by Shanmuga is about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site and was a single bright pixel identification in that first mosaic NASA further saidVikram Lander was scheduled to make a softlanding near the south pole of the moon on September 7 However minutes before its scheduled softlanding ISRO had lost communication with the lander at 21 kilometres above the Moons surfaceThe Chandrayaan2 Vikram lander has been found by our NASAMoon mission the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter See the first mosaic of the impact site httpstcoGA3JspCNuh pictwittercomjaW5a63sAfmdash NASA NASA December 2 2019Days later the Chandryaan2 Orbiter had also clicked a thermal image of Vikram LanderThe Vikram Lander had successfully separated from Chandrayaan2 Orbiter on September 2 After revolving around the Earths orbit for nearly 23 days the craft had begun its journey to the moon on August 14The mission took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 22Despite the setback NASA said that getting close to the Moons surface was an amazing achievementIn September the US space agency had released highresolution images of the lunar region where Vikram Lander had attempted a soft landing on the far side of the Moon However owing to dusk the craft could not be locatedOur Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission imaged the targeted landing site of Indias Chandrayaan2 lander Vikram The images were taken at dusk and the team was not able to locate the lander More images will be taken in October during a flyby in favourable lighting NASA had tweetedCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates