Shanmuga Subramanian, the space enthusiast who found the debris of ISRO’s moon lander Vikram after its hard landing, has claimed that Pragyaan, the Chandrayaan-2’s rover seems to be intact on the lunar surface.
In a series of tweets and pictures posted on Saturday, Subramanian said :
“Chandrayaan-2’s Pragyan ROVER intact on Moon’s surface & has rolled out few meters from the skeleton Vikram Lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing.”
ISRO chief K Sivan said that he had received communications from Mr. Shanmuga and his team of experts was analyzing the available data.
Chandrayaan2's Pragyan "ROVER" intact on Moon's surface & has rolled out few metres from the skeleton Vikram lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing | More details in below tweets @isro #Chandrayaan2 #VikramLander #PragyanRover (1/4) pic.twitter.com/iKSHntsK1f
— Shan (Shanmuga Subramanian) (@Ramanean) August 1, 2020
Posting a picture taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital (LRO), Subramanian pointed out a white and black dot and predicted them to be the Skeleton Lander and Rover respectively. He said that the previous debris located by him and NASA could be of other payloads as the latest pictures from LRO were showing rover tracks on the moon.
He also said that the lander might have relayed the commands received from ISRO to the rover but wasn’t able to communicate it back to the Earth. However, he didn’t deny the possibility of the rover rolling out of the lander because of its impact on the moon’s surface.
Vikram Lander had lost contact with ISRO on September 6 last year, after its attempt for a soft landing near the lunar south pole failed, leaving the entire country dejected. The rocket ‘Bahubali’, carrying the Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover had taken off from Sriharikota last year on July 22.