NASA Says Vikram Had Hard Landing On Moon

Releases images of landing site of Chandrayaan-2, says team couldn’t locate lander

- Nagarjun Dwarakanth

THE U.S. space agency NASA has come up empty in its attempt to locate and photograph the Chandrayaan-2 lander Vikram, which went silent during its attempt to land near the south pole of the Moon earlier this month.

Ten days after Vikram went out of contact, NASA sent its lunar orbiter to fly over the Vikram’s landing site in an attempt to determine its fate.

NASA on Friday released high-resolution images captured by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) during its flyby of the lunar region where India’s ambitious Chandrayaan-2 mission attempted a soft landing near the Moon’s uncharted south pole and found Vikram had a hard landing.