Chandrayaan-2 lunar landing attempt today - live video link

So so close. Great try India!

Marc_G said:

So so close. Great try India!

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Yep, the attitude graphic simulation showed that it was tumbling end over end starting at 2.77 km attitude. Stuck vernier thruster? It also significantly deviated from the trajectory plot at around that time. This really sucks because lunar polar exploration is key to any moon base (H2O ice in crater shadows).

India Just Found Its Lost Vikram Lander on the Moon, Still No Signal
Communications attempts are underway.

https://www.space.com/india-moon-lander-found-by-chandrayaan-2-orbiter.html

India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter circling the moon has spotted the country's lost Vikram lander on the lunar surface, but there is still no signal from the lander, according to Indian media reports.

K Sivan, chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said today (Sept. 8) that the Vikram lander was located by Chandrayaan-2 and efforts to restore contact the probe will continue for at least 14 days, according to a Times of India report.

"We have found the location of Lander Vikram on [the] lunar surface and Orbiter has clicked a thermal image of Lander," Sivan told the ANI news service in an interview, adding that attempts to communicate with the lander are ongoing.

EDIT: Elsewhere, I've seen the claim that's it's intact and only 500 meters from its intended spot.

Been reading a corrective warning that what was said has been misinterpreted (or worded badly).

That he said they orbiter took an image of the area. NOT that they have found the lander in the image (yet, anyway).

One curious thing absent, if they do have an image showing the lander.... where is the image?

Also, this hit at about 100 mph. A soft-landing lander like this not designed to impact at a velocity like that. And it apparently was tumbling, or even stabilized upside down. Very unlikely that anything active survived to operate.

I think there's a lot of wishful thinking going on to expect to hear anything from the debris.

It did carry a NASA passive Retroreflector (for bouncing laser beams back to Earth for distance measurements), that MIGHT work if it was thrown clear or otherwise has a clean line-of-sight, and landed FACE-UP.

https://www.space.com/next-gen-apollo-moon-laser-reflector-on-india-mission.html

georgegassaway said:

I think there's a lot of wishful thinking going on to expect to hear anything from the debris.

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Yep, and that's specifically why I chose to word my edit as "I've seen the claim." I've been seriously skeptical because I see claims, but no image from their orbiter to support them. Considering how easy it would be to tweet same, why wasn't it tweeted? Seems that hopium might be leading statements to be misinterpreted.

BTW - I can confirm* that the lander (or what is left of it) is on the lunar surface.

* - for the humor impaired, it has to be on the lunar surface, where else would it be? Not Mars. Not Earth. Not bounced back into orbit. Not Aliens.

georgegassaway said:

BTW - I can confirm* that the lander (or what is left of it) is on the lunar surface.

* - for the humor impaired, it has to be on the lunar surface, where else would it be? Not Mars. Not Earth. Not bounced back into orbit. Not Aliens.

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LOL. I suspect that's exactly why I didn't see a change to the title of a YouTube video that claimed that the lander was on the moon. Technically completely correct.

Interesting that the best resolution camera is the new one in orbit there they put in.

Marc_G said:

Interesting that the best resolution camera is the new one in orbit there they put in.

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0.32m per pixel vs the 0.5m per pixel of the ten year old NASA LRO. I've read that there used to be national security concerns as to what could be put in an unclassified (NASA) spacecraft, but I don't know if there still is.

Here's an LRO image compilation of Apollo 12/Surveyor 3 landing site images with illumination angle slider:

https://www.lroc.asu.edu/featured_sites/view_site/19

What is it we always say? "Show pictures, or it didn't happen."

I imagine eventually they will find the debris field and show the picture.

I guess when the Lander was having problems it phoned a call center in India for help and was put on hold for an hour like usually happens to me.

FWIW - Here is a thread on NASASpaceflight.com, about this mission. Link is to page 52 (current posts today).

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=20324.1020

As of now, there still is no real image posted, despite several fake ones on the internet.

A government claim that it has been imaged, sitting upside-down, on the surface, 500 meters from where it was supposed to land. But again the lack of releasing the very image that would show that, is very very odd. Imagine Apollo-11 if when Armstrong set foot on the moon, NASA didn't release any live TV video and no astronaut audio either, but said THEY were seeing video of Armstrong walking on the moon. Uh, why not show it to everyone, if it does exist? It's not a military satellite, whole purpose of their orbiter imagery is to SHOW it.

Winston said:

0.32m per pixel vs the 0.5m per pixel of the ten year old NASA LRO. I've read that there used to be national security concerns as to what could be put in an unclassified (NASA) spacecraft, but I don't know if there still is.

Here's an LRO image compilation of Apollo 12/Surveyor 3 landing site images with illumination angle slider:

https://www.lroc.asu.edu/featured_sites/view_site/19

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So Vikram is 2.5 meters by 2 meters. at a .32M/pixel that would give a 7x6 pixel resolution (at best). Not much detail can be gleaned from that.
I'm guessing that no real orientation of the vehicle can be seen.

georgegassaway said:

As of now, there still is no real image posted, despite several fake ones on the internet.

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I wonder where the NASA LRO images are. Perhaps the spot hasn't passed below it yet?:

LRO Mission Overview

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/overview/index.html

LRO and the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) were launched on an Atlas V rocket on June 18, 2009, beginning a four-day trip to the moon. LRO spent its first three years in a low polar orbit collecting detailed information about the moon and its environment. After this initial orbit, LRO transitioned to a stable elliptical orbit, passing low over the lunar south pole.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter

Periselene altitude 20 km (12 mi) (should give some incredible resolution images)
Aposelene altitude 165 km (103 mi)

Elsewhere, I've found that the LRO orbital period is 2 hours.

They certainly know where to look:

https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/chandrayaan-2-vikram-landing-site/

From prior to the landing:

This visualization was generated using NASA's Moon Trek portal (https://trek.nasa.gov/moon) and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's (LRO) Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA).

LRO is in an eccentric polar orbit. But I do not know if this lander was supposed to land in a true 90 degree polar location, or say 80 degrees lattitude (10 degrees from the pole).

It might be that LRO won't go over, or near enough for a good enough view, for a few weeks, as the moon takes about 28 days to rotate 360 degrees.

georgegassaway said:

It might be that LRO won't go over, or near enough for a good enough view, for a few weeks, as the moon takes about 28 days to rotate 360 degrees.

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Yeah, I'll bet that's it.

mach7 said:

So Vikram is 2.5 meters by 2 meters. at a .32M/pixel that would give a 7x6 pixel resolution (at best). Not much detail can be gleaned from that. I'm guessing that no real orientation of the vehicle can be seen.

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I've read that they are using a thermal image. The top of the lander has solar cell panels, so it could have a significantly different thermal image than the bottom of the lander which is probably highly reflective. I just can't figure out why they are so damned shy about releasing some images.

I'm thinking the 0.5m/pixel NASA LRO resolution specification was from its original circular orbital altitude of 50km. This looks better than 0.5m/pixel. You must go to the link to see the image described by the quote as images apparently aren't allowed to be embedded:

"Today's Featured Image of Luna 17 and Lunokhod 1 was obtained during a low altitude (33 km) pass providing the highest resolution view yet of the landing site."

https://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/402

LRO press kit PDF. What a stuffed with goodies spacecraft:

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/360020main_LRO_LCROSS_presskit2.pdf

LROC consists of two narrow-angle cameras (NACs) to provide 0.5 meter scale panchromatic images over a 5-km swath, a wide-angle camera (WAC) to provide images at a scale of 100 meter in seven color bands over a 60-km swath, and a Sequence and Compressor System (SCS) supporting data acquisition for both cameras. LROC is a modified version of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s ConTeXt Camera (CTX) and MARs Color Imager (MARCI) provided by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego, Calif.