India / Engineer claims Chandrayaan 2's rover is intact; ISRO says 'analysing' claim

Chennai: A techie from Chennai has claimed that the rover onboard Chandrayaan 2, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) moon mission, is present on the lunar surface and has even moved a few metres.

The Chandrayaan 2 was India’s second mission to the moon which was sent to the space last year. It had a lander Vikram and a rover named Pragyan, which translates to wisdom in Sanskrit.

The techie Shanmuga Subramanian has posted a series of images on Twitter which he claims show Pragyan is intact and “has rolled out few metres from the skeleton Vikram lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing”.

Chandrayaan2's Pragyan "ROVER" intact on Moon's surface & has rolled out few metres from the skeleton Vikram lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing | More details in below tweets @isro #Chandrayaan2 #VikramLander #PragyanRover (1/4) pic.twitter.com/iKSHntsK1f

— Shan (Shanmuga Subramanian) (@Ramanean) August 1, 2020

Subramanian had earlier identified Vikram’s debris using Nasa’s images. And he has used the US space agency’s images this time too to back his claim.

“1.Debris I found was of Langumir probe from the Vikram lander. 2. Debris NASA found might be from other payloads, antenna, retro braking engines, solar panels on side etc. 3. Rover has rolled out from lander & has actually travelled few metres from the surface,” he said in one of his tweets.

Subramanian said that it was difficult to detect the rover because it is present on the South Pole of the moon, which is “not always well lit”. And that is the reason, the techie says, it was not detected in Nasa flyby on November 11.

He further tweeted: “Update: It seems the commands were sent to lander blindly for days & there is a distinct possibility that lander could have received commands and relayed it to the rover.. but lander was not able to communicate it back to the earth.”

Scientists lost contact with the Vikram lander less than two minutes before it was supposed to make a soft landing on the lunar surface.

Vikram lander was trying to make history by making India the first country to “soft land” on the South Pole of the moon. Scientists believe there could be water ice on the moon’s South Pole.

Pragyan was expected to examine the surface of the moon.