[India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission launched in July. It was supposed to land near the south pole of the moon Sept. 7. A successful landing on the moon is a huge technical feat: This year, an Israeli spacecraft crashed while attempting it.]
By Joanna Slater
 |
|
The
Vikram lander impact point. (NASA/AFP/Getty Images)
|
NEW
DELHI — A software engineer
in the south Indian city of Chennai who pored over satellite images in his
spare time helped NASA locate the debris of India’s ill-fated mission to the
moon.
Shanmuga Subramanian looked at images of the
moon’s surface on two laptops for six to seven hours a day until he found what
he thought might be the debris of the moon lander, he told Indian television
channel NDTV on Tuesday.
He sent NASA an email in October with his
findings. On Monday, NASA confirmed the discovery and credited Subramanian for
his help. Subramanian provided a “positive identification of debris,” it said.
On his blog, Subramanian describes himself as
a coder, photographer and nerd. In his spare time, he runs a Facebook page that
provides live updates on rainfall in Chennai. “I did feel a lot of happiness
that I was able to find it,” he told NDTV of his discovery, saying he never
misses a launch by India’s space agency.
India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission launched in
July. It was supposed to land near the south pole of the moon Sept. 7. A
successful landing on the moon is a huge technical feat: This year, an Israeli
spacecraft crashed while attempting it.
The voyage of Chandrayaan-2 transfixed India
and put it on the brink of becoming only the fourth country in the world to
land a rover on the moon.
But the effort ended in heartbreak when
Indian space engineers lost contact with the craft during the final minutes of
its descent to the surface. Hours later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
hugged the head of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) as the
official broke down in tears. The government later said the craft had
“hard-landed” on the moon.
The ISRO announced that it located the lander
the day after the crash but provided no further details or images. The location
of the debris remained a mystery to the rest of the world until Monday, when
NASA released images showing the main crash site as well as scattered wreckage
Subramanian shared an email message he
received early Tuesday from a NASA scientist congratulating him on his
discovery. He urged India not to lose heart and to continue investing in its
space ambitions.
“Failure is a steppingstone to success,”
Subramanian told NDTV.
Read more
