Search For Chandrayaan 2 Vikram Lander To Begin Again: NASA

ISRO's Chandrayaan 2 was launched last month after which Vikram lander lost all communication with the Earth. NASA conducted a flyby with the LRO at the proposed landing site of the lander. While a few images were clicked, the LRO was unable to locate the Vikram lander. Now, NASA says it will conduct a rigorous search for the lander once again.

According to the latest report, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured a fresh set of images of the hard landing site of the Vikram lander. The initial pictures were clicked on September 17 during lunar dusk, which cast long shadows and made it difficult to spot the lander. However, the new images are captured under better lighting conditions and space experts are making a rigorous search for Vikram, says LRO Project Scientist Noah Petro to IANS.

"The lighting conditions on Monday were much more favorable, (with) less shadow in the region", he said on Wednesday, October 16. "We flew over the landing site on Monday and the camera team is still evaluating images, so we should know more in the next few days."

Chandrayaan 2 Vikram Lander Update

A careful search, as rigorously as possible will be conducted, Petro said, who is based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland near Washington. The team is working on finding the Vikram lander and will soon update on what happened to it, the statement said.

This latest update from NASA regarding Chandrayaan 2's Vikram lander. At the same time, the LRO team will have numerous challenges to locate Vikram. For one, the lunar area is vast and it's hard to pinpoint the exact location of the probable landing site. Hence, Petro says it'll "take some time to search the images because we are looking over a very, very large area."

Chandrayaan 2 Vikram Lander Timeline

The Indian Space Research Organisation launched the Chandrayaan 2 Moon orbiter successfully. The Vikram Lander was supposed to soft-land on the Moon's south pole surface on September 7. However, due to reasons unknown yet, Vikram lost all communication. A possible hard crash speculated.

NASA's LRO conducted a flyby around Moon's South Pole to spot Vikram, but the attempt was in vain. NASA's LRO could conduct the next flyby around the region on November 10, as it might be a favorable time to capture good images.