'Orbiter already found it', says ISRO chief K Sivan day after Chennai techie's claim of locating Vikram Lander

New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: A day after the American space agency NASA with the help of an Indian techie claimed to have found the debris of the Moon lander ‘Vikram’ of Chandrayaan-2 on the lunar surface, ISRO chief Dr. K Sivan on Wednesday said that the Orbiter onboard Chandrayaan-2 had located the Vikram lander earlier, adding that the news was declared on the space agency’s official website.  

"We don't want to tell anything on this one. After the landing date itself, our website had given that our own orbiter has located Vikram. We have already declared that on our website. You can go back and see...Our own orbiter has located the site of the lander," Dr. Sivan said as reported by news agency ANI.

The ISRO on September 10 had released a statement on its official website informing about locating the debris of Vikram lander on the lunar surface by the Orbiter onboard Chandrayaan-2 but no communication has been established till yet. The agency also said, "all possible efforts were being made to re-establish contact".

#VikramLander has been located by the orbiter of #Chandrayaan2, but no communication with it yet.
All possible efforts are being made to establish communication with lander.#ISRO

— ISRO (@isro) September 10, 2019

Dr. Sivan had on September 10 also said that Vikram had made a "hard landing" and said the orbiter had managed to take thermal images of the Vikram lander.

The American space agency NASA on Tuesday released images showing the site’s changes on the Moon’s surface, and the impact point before and after the Vikram lander landed on the lunar surface. The images were clicked by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Camera.

The #Chandrayaan2 Vikram lander has been found by our @NASAMoon mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See the first mosaic of the impact site https://t.co/GA3JspCNuh pic.twitter.com/jaW5a63sAf

— NASA (@NASA) December 2, 2019

NASA also said that it had released mosaic images of the site on September 26 and invited the public to search for the signs of Vikram lander. The NASA on Tuesday along with the images also credited a Chennai-based engineer Shanmuga Subramanian in finding the debris of the lander. The space agency said that he contacted the LRO project with positive identification of debris — with the first piece found about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site.

"The debris first located by Shanmuga is about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site and was a single bright pixel identification in that first mosaic," NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.

Also Read: NASA finds Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram Lander, releases images of impact site on lunar surface

Vikram Lander was scheduled to make a soft-landing near the south pole of the moon on September 7. However, minutes before its scheduled soft-landing, ISRO had lost communication with the lander at 2.1 kilometers above the Moon's surface. Days later, the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter had also clicked a thermal image of Vikram Lander.

The Vikram Lander had successfully separated from Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter on September 2. After revolving around the Earth's orbit for nearly 23 days, the craft had begun its journey to the moon on August 14.