ISRO says Chandrayaan 2 lander Vikram located, attempting contact

Vikram, the lander, was lost when it was attempting a "soft" or controlled landing near the south pole of the moon

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Chief K Sivan said on Sunday Chandrayaan-2’s lander, the Vikram, had been located after the orbiter sent an image of the same but communication has not been established yet. Sivan said Vikram “must have had a hard-landing” on the lunar surface. “We are trying to have contact. It will be communicated soon,” he said.  

An official from the space agency said the lander was in an upturned position and it could have been damaged.

Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has the highest resolution camera (0.3m) used in any lunar mission so far. It will provide high-resolution images, which will be immensely useful to the global scientific community. The space agency is trying to establish communication with lander Vikram, if it can manage the mission will come alive, said Sivan. “The science part of Chandrayaan-2 is 100 per cent successful, while the technology demonstration part is 90-95 per cent,” he told Business Standard. 

On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hinted the lander might have traveled at a higher-than-expected speed and crash landed. “If historians some day write about today’s incident, they will certainly say that inspired by our romantic description of the moon throughout life, Chandrayaan, in the last leg of the journey, rushed to embrace the moon,” Modi said. “I can proudly say that the effort was worth it and so was the journey.”

On July 22, the Rs 978-crore Chandrayaan-2 was launched by India's heavy lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III, nick named Isro’s Bahubali.