Indian techie spots Chandrayaan-2's crashed lander on lunar surface
The techie located the debris on the moon's south pole by using the US space agency's images
After three months of frantic search, a Nasa satellite has found the Indian Vikram lander, which crashed on the lunar surface in September. It was a techie from Chennai of India who found the debris of the moonlander.
The techie, Shanmuga Subramanian (Shan), a mechanical engineer and a computer programmer, located the debris on the moon's south pole by using the US space agency's images.
Shanmuga took the lunar images from Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and studied them for weeks to locate the debris of the lander.
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Upon locating the debris, Shanmuga contacted the LRO project with a positive identification of debris, with the first piece found about 750 metres north-west of the main crash site.
Authenticating his discovery, Nasa's deputy project scientist (LRO mission) John Keller wrote to Shanmuga – thanking him on his finding and confirming the matter.
Shanmuga was also given credit for his observation oh the Nasa and ASU pages.
Later, confirming the news to the world, Nasa tweeted about finding Vikram lander and attached a photo of the impact site. An image of moon with blue and green dots show the impact point of Vikram and an associated debris field.
Blasting off in July, India had hoped with its Chandrayaan-2 mission to become the fourth country after the US, Russia and 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 2.1km above the surface.
Days after the failed landing, the Indian Space Research Organization said it had located the lander, but had not been able to establish communication.
