Washington (AFP)
A NASA satellite orbiting the moon has passed over the site where the Indian probe Vikram should have landed on September 7, but he did not see it.
The US space agency on Thursday released photographs, taken Sept. 17 by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite, of plains located about 600 km from the South Pole, where Vikram should have alienated.
"So far, the team has not been able to locate or photograph the stringer," says NASA.
But as the satellite passed at dawn, part of the terrain overflown was in the shadows. "It's possible that the Vikram lander is hiding in a shadow."
The satellite will come back in October and the light will be better, says NASA.
India launched the Chandrayaan-2 mission on 22 July. The main orbiter spacecraft, which remains in orbit around the moon, dropped the Vikram landing gear a few days before the planned landing, but at the end of the descent, while descending to an altitude of 2 km, the contact was lost. One kilometer from the moon landing point, Vikram was traveling at a horizontal speed of 48 meters per second, and a vertical speed of 60 meters per second, according to the American organization The Planetary Society.
On September 10, the Indian Space Agency (Isro) announced that Vikram had been "located" by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, but without communication. India says it has been trying to restore contact since.
But NASA, in its statement, writes that "Vikram suffered a hard landing", which in space jargon means a crash.
India would have been the fourth country, after Russia, the United States and China, to alune a probe. Israel also failed in April.
© 2019 AFP