Vikram lander located on Lunar surface: ISRO chief

Lucknow: After the successful launch of Chandrayaan-2, ISRO had to suffer from partial failure as India lost contact with it during its descent.

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"We've found the location of Vikram Lander on lunar surface and orbiter has clicked a thermal image of Lander. But there is no communication yet. We are trying to have contact. It will be communicated soon," ISRO chief K Sivan told news agency ANI.

A day after Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram module went silent, ISRO chief K Sivan on Sunday said the space agency has located the lander on the lunar surface and is trying to establish contact.

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“We’ve found the location of Vikram Lander on lunar surface and orbiter has clicked a thermal image of Lander. But there is no communication yet. We are trying to have contact. It will be communicated soon,” Sivan told news agency ANI.

In an interview to Doordarshan, Sivan said attempts to re-establish contact with the lost lander would continue for the next two weeks.

On Saturday morning when india lost contact with Chandrayaan-2, Vikram was just about 2 km above the moon’s surface. It was travelling at a speed of about 60 metres/sec. It was clear that if the velocity was not reduced immediately, the lander would meet the Moon’s surface at great speed within a few seconds.

But contact with the lander had been lost, and scientists had no way to ascertain whether Vikram had decelerated as it had been programmed to. Nor could they intervene from the ground station to control the speed, if the lander was not being able to do so on its own.

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“Vikram lander descent was as planned and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1 km. Subsequently, the communications from the lander to the ground station was lost. The data is being analysed,” Sivan had announced in a choked voice.

Chandrayaan-2, a follow-on mission, involved scrupulous planning. There were hundreds of top scientists working on it according to the sources it will go around the moon for one year.

It stated “space is hard”, NASA said that it looks forward to future opportunities to explore the solar system with ISRO.

NASA tweeted “We commend ISRO’s attempt to land their Chandrayaan-2 mission on the Moon’s South Pole. You have inspired us with your journey and look forward to future opportunities to explore our solar system together.”