Crashed Indian Moon lander mysteriously ‘missing’ as Nasa fails to find any trace of it
INDIA'S crashed Moon lander has been missing for over a month now and Nasa can't seem to find any trace of it.
The Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander disappeared somewhere near the unexplored lunar south pole in September.
India lost contact with its £114million spacecraft while attempting a soft landing on the Moon's South Pole.
The Indian Space Research Organisation was trying to put a probe on the Moon for the first time in the country's history.
Nasa has been looking over images from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in an attempt to spot Chandrayaan-2's Vikram but has had no luck so far.
It compared images before and after the crash but has said that region of the Moon looks completely empty in both.
John Keller, the deputy project scientist for the LRO mission, the Press Trust of India: "It is possible that Vikram is located in a shadow or outside of the search area.
"Because of the low latitude, approximately 70 degrees south, the area is never completely free of shadows."
There is also the possibility that the experts are just looking in the wrong spot.
The Indian Space Research Organisation did report seeing the lander with thermal imaging tech a day after the crash.
However, the Moon's south pole has 14 Earth days of lunar night when temperatures can drop to minus 180 degrees Celsius.
This would have been a death sentence for the scientific equipment and any thermal signs coming from the lander.
Had the spacecraft been successful, it would have marked the first time India has touched down on the Moon, making it the fourth nation to land there after the US, Russia and China.
The Chandrayaan-2 rocket - the word for "Moon craft" in Sanskrit - was designed for a soft landing on the lunar south pole.
Scientists had planned to deploy a rover from the unmanned spacecraft to explore water deposits and ice confirmed by a previous Indian space mission.
An Israeli non-profit mission crashed into the Moon as it attempted to land on the lunar surface earlier this year.
The Moon – our closest neighbour explained
Here's what you need to know...
- The Moon is a natural satellite – a space-faring body that orbits a planet
- It's Earth's only natural satellite, and is the fifth biggest in the Solar System
- The Moon measures 2,158 miles across, roughly 0.27 times the diameter of Earth
- Temperatures on the Moon range from minus 173 degrees Celcius to 260 degrees Celcius
- Experts assumed the Moon was another planet, until Nicolaus Copernicus outlined his theory about our Solar System in 1543
- It was eventually assigned to a "class" after Galileo discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610
- The Moon is believed to have formed around 4.51billion years ago
- The strength of its gravitational field is about a sixth of Earth's gravity
- Earth and the Moon have "synchronous rotation", which means we always see the same side of the Moon – hence the phrase "dark side of the Moon"
- The Moon's surface is actually dark, but appears bright in the sky due to its reflective ground
- During a solar eclipse, the Moon covers the Sun almost completely. Both objects appear a similar size in the sky because the Sun is both 400 times larger and farther
- The first spacecraft to reach the Moon was in 1959, as part of the Soviet Union's Lunar program
- The first manned orbital mission was Nasa's Apollo 8 in 1968
- And the first manned lunar landing was in 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission
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Do you have any thoughts on where the missing Moon lander could be? Let us know in the comments...
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