Rejecting NASA's claims of locating the debris of the crashed Vikram Lander on the lunar surface, ISRO chief K Sivan said the Indian Space Research Organisation had located it long back. "Our own orbiter had located Vikram Lander, we had already declared that on our website, you can go back and see," ISRO chief said. On Tuesday, NASA had released some images showing the crashed site of Vikram lander's impact and had acknowledged the role of a Chennai-based mechanical engineer and app developer in locating the site of the debris.
According to the announcement by NASA and the Arizona State University, the site was located by Shanmuga Subramanian, who on his own, scoured the pictures taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital Camera (LROC).
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.
One of them, Subramanian, contacted the LROC project with positive identification of debris, it 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."
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.
But two image sequences were acquired on October 14 and 15, and on November 11 were better.
Vikram lost contact with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) following its launch from Chandraayan-2 moon orbiter on September 6 when it tried to make a soft landing near the moon's south pole.
"Vikram Lander has been located by the orbiter of Chandrayaan 2, but no communication with it yet. All possible efforts are being made to establish communication with lander," ISRO had tweeted three days after Vikram lander crashed on the lunar surface, on September 10.
Also Read | NASA spots Vikram Lander's crash site on moon, takes photos of debris
Also Read | How Chennai's Shanmuga Subramanian helped NASA locate Vikram Lander
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