Chandrayaan 2 Pragyan rover not damaged; New NASA images shows rover separated from lander after crash landing

The Chandrayaan 2 mission was the highlight of ISRO's 2019 agenda which unfortunately was cut short at around 2 kilometres from the lunar surface as the lander went through a comms failure during critical landing stage. The lander was then reported to have crash-landed on the lunar surface. Now new images from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - the US space agency has rekindled interest in the moon mission.

Chennai techie Shanmuga Subramanian had earlier identified Vikram's debris by using NASA's images last year and has now contacted the Indian space agency claiming that the NASA images which released in May shows the rover called Pragyan and also shows a track which indicates that the rover may have moved a few meters.

In a report by Times of India, ISRO Chairman K Sivan was quoted stating,"We’ve heard nothing from Nasa so far on the matter. But yes, the person who had identified Vikram debris earlier has sent us an email about this. Our specialists are looking into the matter and we cannot say anything at this juncture.”

K Sivan was also quoted in an IANS report stating, "We have received communication from him (Subramanian). Our experts are analysing the same."

Subramanian, in a tweet, explained that the commands were sent to the lander blindly for a number of days and it could be that the lander may have received commands and then relayed it to the rover. The lander could have not been able to communicate back to Earth.

The IANS report explains, "Tweeting a picture taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital (LRO), Shanmugam said the white dot might be the skeleton lander devoid of other payloads and the black dot might be the rover.

According to him, the rover may be still intact on the moon's surface. Latest pictures from LRO (Jan 4, 2020) showed rover tracks on the moon from the lander.

He said the debris he had found earlier might be from one of the payloads. The debris found by NASA might be of other payloads, transmitting antenna and thrusters.

Vikram lost contact with ISRO following its launch from Chandrayaan-2 moon orbiter on September 6 last year when it tried to make a soft landing near the moon's south pole."

The moon mission blasted off from the Sriharikota base in Andhra Pradesh which carried the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover as well.