NASA has found the crash site and debris of India’s Chandrayaan-2 Vikram moon lander following a tip from an Indian space enthusiast who examined pictures of the area of the moon taken by a US orbiting camera.
The site was located by Shanmuga Subramanian, who on his own scoured the pictures taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital Camera (LROC), NASA and Arizona State University announced on Monday confirming the find.
The first mosaic image of the likely crash site made from pictures taken by the LROC on September 17 was downloaded by several people to look for signs of the Vikram, NASA said.
Arizona State University (ASU), where the LROC project is located, said, “After receiving this tip the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images.”One of them, Subramanian, contacted the LROC project with a positive identification of debris, it said.
When the images for the first mosaic were acquired on September 17, the impact point was poorly illuminated and could not easily be identified, it said.-IANS news
