Pragyan rover intact on Moon`s surface, says Chennai techie Shanmuga Subramanian who found Chandrayaan-2`s Vikram lander debris on Moon

Chennai: A Chennai based space enthusiast Shanmuga Subramanian, who in December 2019 had found Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander's debris on Moon has now said that Chandrayaan-2's Pragyan rover is intact on Moon's surface.

Shanmuga also stated that it has rolled out a few metres from the skeleton of Vikram lander, whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing.

He claimed that the debris he found was of Langmuir probe from the Vikram lander and the debris NASA found might be from the other payloads, mainly - antenna, retro braking engines, solar panels on the side etc.

He expressed, "South Pole region is not always well lit and the lander was in a shallow depth of 2 ms from the surface so it was not visible on November 11's NASA flyby due to different angle of incidence and would be difficult for anyone to find it unless the sun is directly above the surface.

"Since the sun is never directly above moon's surface in that region, it would have been so difficult," said the 34-year old Shanmuga.

He stated, "It seems the commands were sent to lander blindly for days and there is a distinct possibility that lander could have received commands and relayed it to the rover but the lander was not able to communicate it back to the earth."

Chandrayaan-2 was injected on August 14, 2019, and had successfully inserted into lunar orbit on August 20, 2019. 

While orbiting the moon in a 100 km lunar polar orbit, Vikram Lander was separated from Orbiter on September 02, 2019, in preparation for landing. 

Vikram Lander descent was as planned and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1 km before the communication from the lander to the ground stations was lost.