NASA's Moon Orbiter Will Help Us Find Vikram Lunar Lander

What happened to the Chandrayaan 2 moon lander? On September 6, when the Vikram lander touched the lunar surface, it lost contact with the ISRO mission control. And until now, we don’t know what its ultimate fate would be. However, today, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of NASA will fly over the site where Vikram landed, near the south pole of the moon. Hopefully, it will be able to show us the resting place of Vikram on the lunar surface.

It’s possible that Vikram touched the Moon’s surface, it’s not in operation but is still in one piece. The ISRO said that the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter spotted Vikram on the lunar surface. But the space agency hasn’t shared any photos of the site.

Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization were on an emotional ride during the first attempt to land on the south pole of the Moon; however, since the LRO will navigate its way over the south pole today, the orbiter will have its eyes on the surface.

LRO’s camera houses three different imagers, which means it can ogle the lunar surface with outstanding clarity. After the pass, the two black-and-white cameras, as well as one wide-angle camera, will send images back to Earth. Each month, NASA publicly releases images taken by LRO with huge data sets of multiple terabytes at the Planetary Data System.

Noah Petro, lead of LRO project said:

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2009, has been orbiting the Moon for more than ten years, taking shots and scientific measurements of the planet. It has done a good job at locating moon landers, with the spotting of China’s Chang’e 4 in January as well as Isreal’s Beresheet lander’s crash site in the Sea of Serenity.