NASA finds no trace of India's Vikram lander in latest pics by Moon orbiter

Washington DC: NASA has found no evidence of Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander in the latest images captured by its Moon orbiter of the lunar south pole region where India's ambitious mission attempted a historic soft landing, the US space agency said on

Wednesday.

On September 7, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempted a soft landing of Vikram on the uncharted lunar south pole, before losing communication with the lander.

"The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged the area of the targeted Chandrayaan-2 Vikram landing site on October 14, but did not observe any evidence of the lander," Noah Edward Petro, the Project Scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission,

said in an exclusive email interaction.

Petro said that the camera team carefully examined the images and employed the change detection technique — using a ratio of an image captured prior to the landing attempt to the one acquired on October 14.

This approach, he said, is used for finding new meteorite impacts on the Moon that also helped locate the recent Beresheet, a small robotic Moon lander and lunar probe operated by the Israel Aerospace Industries.