The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA,) on the 3rd of December, released images of the crashed Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan 2 mission.
On the 7th of September, while landing on the Moon’s surface, the Vikram Lander crashed and lost contact with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO.)
However, after two months, with the help of Shanmuga Subramanian, a Chennai based mechanical engineer, NASA found the crashed Vikram Lander.
NASA, in its statement, said, “Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with identification of debris. After receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images.”
The first piece of the crashed Lander was found about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site.
Shanmuga Subramanian, a 33 year old Chennai based mechanical engineer and Information Technology (IT) professional, contacted NASA and helped them find the Vikram Lander.
Shanmuga said, “I had side by side comparison of those two images on two of my laptops… on one side there was the old image, and another side there was the new image released by NASA.” He further said, “It was quite hard, but (I) spent some effort.”
On the 3rd of October, Shanmuga took to Twitter and announced his discovery about the Vikram Lander.
With the help of Shanmuga’s discovery, NASA then performed additional searches in the area and announced the findings.
Subramaniam said, “As far as I am concerned the Chandrayaan 2 mission was a success. The crash landing of Vikram was sad… but it has got people talking about ISRO and the Lander… that is a positive.” He further added, “I feel elated that NASA acknowledged my contribution… I used NASA’s images to make my observations. It is difficult to spot debris on the moon… I could only spot one piece of debris.”
John Keller, Deputy Project Scientist of LRO Mission, thanked Shanmuga Subramaniam for his initiative to discover the Vikram Lander, which helped NASA come up with images showing debris of the Lander.
Indian techie Shanmuga Subramanian has found Vikram Lander of #ISRO. Findings of debris location published by #NASA. https://t.co/gGbfIzOkS7
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) December 3, 2019
The #Chandrayaan2 Vikram lander has been found by our @NASAMoon mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See the first mosaic of the impact site https://t.co/GA3JspCNuh pic.twitter.com/jaW5a63sAf
— NASA (@NASA) December 2, 2019
Stay tuned for further updates.
