Software engineer spots the rover which travelled piggyback on Vikram
Eight months after he detected “Vikram”, the lander payload of Chandrayaan-2, India’s second unmanned mission to moon which went haywire minutes before it was to land on the lunar surface, a Chennai-based software engineer Shanmuga Subramanian has spotted “Pragyan”, the Rover which travelled piggyback on Vikram.
Shanmuga Subramanian, addressed as Shan by friends, tweeted on Sunday that Chandrayaan-2’s Pragyan “Rover” is intact on Moon’s surface and has rolled out a few meters from the skeleton Vikram lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing.
This was followed by a series of tweets by him (@Ramanean) in which he said that the rover has rolled out from lander and has actually travelled a few metres from the surface.
He said he had intimated the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) about his findings. In 2019 December, Shan had spotted the lander Vikram, the main payload in the Chandrayaan-2 space mission, with the help of satellite images provided by the NASA.
The Chandrayaan-2 mission was launched by ISRO from Satish Dhavan Space Centre at Sriharikotta, 100 km north of Chennai on July 22, 2019 onboard a Geo Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III rocket and the project cost the exchequer Rs 978 crore.
The spacecraft entered the Moon’s orbit on August 20, 2019. The ISRO engineers and scientists had scheduled to make a soft landing of Vikram on the lunar surface on September 6, 2019. But a software glitch resulted in Vikram making a crash landing on Moon and the Space scientists were under the impression that the mission had a premature death.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had travelled to the ISRO headquarters in Bangalore to be with the scientists and to watch the soft landing of Vikram and Pragyan on the lunar surface. He was seen hugging and consoling K Sivan, ISRO chairman who broke down after the master control room lost track of the second lunar mission of India in the last moment.
Shan’s finding proves that the rover Pragyan remains intact despite the crash landing. It is for the ISRO to take the lead and find out the possibilities of getting any communication from the rover.
