Washington: Vikram had a “hard landing”, NASA said on Friday, as it released high-resolution images captured by its reconnaissance orbiter of the Moon’s unchartered south pole where the Chandrayaan 2 lander attempted to soft-land during the ambitious mission three weeks ago.
The module had attempted a soft landing on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters before losing communication with ISRO on September 7.
The site was about 600 km from the south pole in a relatively ancient terrain, according to the US space agency. “Vikram had a hard landing and the precise location of the spacecraft in the lunar highlands has yet to be determined,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
“The scene was captured from a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Quickmap fly-around of the targeted landing site image width is about 150 kilometres across the centre.”
John Keller, Deputy Project Scientist Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission, Goddard Space Flight Centre, told PTI via email that LRO would next fly over the landing site on October 14 when “lighting conditions will be more favourable”. Vikram was scheduled to touch down on September 7. (PTI)
