No, Vikram Lander has not crashed. This is what it means
No, Vikram lander has not crashed. India's ambitious moon mission is still alive, and how! While hopes of millions were dashed on September 7 after the Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, lost contact with the Chandrayaan-2 lander, India can now breathe a sigh of relief. A day after ISRO located Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander on the lunar surface, the Indian space agency came out with yet another good news. ISRO said the Vikram lander is safe, and it has not crashed. An ISRO official has confirmed that the Vikram lander is in a single piece and not broken into pieces. It is in a tilted position. ISRO said it is making all-out efforts to see whether communication can be re-established with the lander.
India's bold mission to soft-land on the moon received a setback in the early hours of Saturday when the Vikram module lost communication with ground station just 2.1 km from the lunar surface. This was the most complex stage of the country's second expedition to the moon.
Vikram Lander is safe: What it means
Now that the Vikram lander has been detected safe and intact, chances of re-establishing contact with it have brimmed up. The possibility of establishing contact would have been less if the lander was not found safe. Now, if all systems of the Vikram lander function, the contact can be made again.
Vital thing is antennas will have to point towards the ground station or the orbiter. Such operation is extremely difficult. At the same time, chances are good and we will have to keep our fingers crossed, an ISRO official said. He said the lander generating power is not an issue, as it has "solar panels all around it" and it also has "internal batteries" which "are not used much."
Vikram carried three payloads Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive Ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA), Chandra's Surface Thermo-physical Experiment (ChaSTE) and Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA).
