(Image source from: latestly.com)

If you have been keeping up with the news, you probably know about the Chandrayaan 2 launch and everything there is to know about the moon mission from ISRO that wasn’t a complete success as the scientists lost connection with the Vikram lander. The scientists have been frantically trying their best for the past three months to find traces of the lander and locate it.

While all the space agencies were busy finding and tracing the lander, it was Shanmuga Subramanian, a mechanical engineer and computer programmer from Chennai, India, who found the traces of the Vikram lander debris making use of the NASA images. He found that the lander is located in the south pole of Moon.

Shanmuga, who likes to go by the name Shan is from Madurai and worked with Cognizant prior to his current job at Lennox India Technology Centre where he works as a technical architect. He made use of the lunar images released by Nasa's Moon's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which were then studied for weeks by him before he made a conclusion with all the observations at hand.

Following making his discovery of the Vikram Lander, Shan wrote back to NASA informing them about his discoveries. After cross verifying and authenticating all the findings that Shan presented NASA with, the deputy project scientist (LRO mission) at NASA, John Keller personally emailed him back congratulating him on his discovery.

@NASA has credited me for finding Vikram Lander on Moon's surface#VikramLander #Chandrayaan2@timesofindia @TimesNow @NDTV pic.twitter.com/2LLWq5UFq9

— Shan (@Ramanean) December 2, 2019

Later, officially confirming the news, NASA tweeted out stating, “The Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander has been found by our NasaMoon mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See the first mosaic of the impact site.” The blue and the green dots significantly showcase the impact point of the Vikram lander and the debris around it.

The #Chandrayaan2 Vikram lander has been found by our @NASAMoon mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See the first mosaic of the impact site https://t.co/GA3JspCNuh pic.twitter.com/jaW5a63sAf

— NASA (@NASA) December 2, 2019

ISRO and NASA have been consistently working together to trace the location of the Vikram Lander since September 07th, 2019 when it failed to land on the surface of the moon as per the plans. NASA has even sent signals using the deep space network antennas located in California, Madrid and Canberra to communicate with the Vikram lander but everything to no avail.

Later, it made use of the LRO orbiter that is circling the Moon to take the images of the area near the South Pole in an attempt to locate the lander. In addition, ISRO has also been using the functional orbiter of the Chandrayaan 2, circling the moon at around 100 km altitude for further scanning and possibly locating the lander.

By Somapika Dutta