‘Chandrayaan 2 had a ‘hard landing’, not able to locate lander’, says NASA

NASA, the space agency of USA has confirmed that the Vikram Lander had a hard landing on the surface of Moon. NASA also informed that they can not locate the lander. NASA also has shared the images also.

A statement released by NASA on Friday has informed about this. ” The Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram, attempted a landing September 7, on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters. Vikram had a hard landing and the precise location of the spacecraft in the lunar highlands has yet to be determined. The scene above was captured from a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Quickmap fly-around of the targeted landing site image width is about 150 kilometers across the center.

Vikram, was scheduled to touch down on at 4:24 pm Eastern Daylight Time. This event was India’s first attempt at a soft landing on the moon. The site was located about 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the south pole in a relatively ancient terrain (70.8°S latitude, 23.5°E longitude). In order to visualize the site, take a quick fly-around. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) passed over the landing site on September 17 and acquired a set of high resolution images of the area; so far the LROC team has not been able to locate or image the lander” ,stated the statement.

Our @LRO_NASA mission imaged the targeted landing site of India’s Chandrayaan-2 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 favorable lighting. More: https://t.co/1bMVGRKslp pic.twitter.com/kqTp3GkwuM

— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2019

On July 22, the Rs 978 crore Chandrayaan-2 was launched into the space by India’s heavy lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mk III) in a text book style. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft comprised three segments — the Orbiter (weighing 2,379 kg, eight payloads), Vikram (1,471 kg, four payloads) and Pragyan (27 kg, two payloads). After five earth-bound orbit raising activities, Chandrayaan-2 was inserted into the lunar orbit. On September 2, Vikram separated from the orbiter.