India claims to have spotted the country’s Vikram lunar lander on the surface of the Moon days after the spacecraft presumably crashed during a landing attempt. India still has not made contact with the lander, which went silent moments before its scheduled touchdown, but Indian officials are hopeful that the lander might still function.
“We are trying to establish contact,” Kailasavadivoo Sivan, the chairperson of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) which oversees the lander, told Asian News International (ANI). “It will be communicated soon.”
The Vikram lander is a key part of India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission, which is aimed at studying the Moon’s south pole in greater detail. The lander, which was carrying a rover called…