LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera instrument, or LROC, imaged the intended south pole touchdown site for the lander as per the plan on September 17.
LROC lead investigator Mark Robinson, of Arizona State University, provided the following statement to Inside Outer Space: “Per NASA policy, all LRO data are publicly available. NASA will share any before and after flyover imagery of the area around the targeted Chandrayaan-2 Vikram Lander landing site to support analysis by the Indian Space Research Organization.”
The statement also noted that, during the September 17 LRO flyover of the area, local lunar time was near dusk, “leading to poor lighting and a challenging imaging environment.”
Notably, India attempted to make history on 7 September by becoming just the fourth nation to successfully land a probe on the Moon. It came agonisingly close, but after journeying millions of kilometres, the Vikram lander lost contact in the final few hundred metres and crash-landed on the lunar surface.
After a postponed launch, India’s Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft began its journey to the Moon on 22 July.
Following this, Nasa officials confirmed that their Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will fly over the part of the Moon where Vikram lies and will take photographs in the hopes of determining the lander’s fate.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is a robotic spacecraft that has been revolving around the Moon for over a decade now. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is part of a Nasa mission that is quite similar to India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission.
Prasanta Patnaik