2 failed moon landings (south side issues...)

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A Second Failed Moon Landing
India lost contact with its spacecraft just before touchdown. Why is it so hard to stick a lunar landing?

MARINA KOREN
SEP 7, 2019

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The latest attempt to land on the moon may have failed this week, after an Indian spacecraft—an uncrewed, robotic mission—appeared to have potentially crashed. The Chandrayaan-2 mission, developed and launched by India’s space agency, began orbiting the moon in August and released a lander yesterday. Mission Control lost contact with the lander, named Vikram, as it neared the surface. Indian officials have not yet announced the cause of the failure.

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Landsman would know. In April, his own lunar mission smashed into pieces on the surface. Like Vikram, the Beresheet lander, built by the Israeli nonprofit group SpaceIL, stopped calling home just before it was supposed to touch down. The only successful attempt this year was made in January, when China landed a spacecraft, with rover included, on the far side of the moon, the face that never turns toward Earth—a world first.

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Chandrayaan, Sanskrit for “moon craft,” launched in July, poised to make India only the fourth country to land something on the moon, after the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union. A decade earlier, the Chandrayaan-1 mission delivered an orbiter carrying a probe that was deliberately crashed into the surface as a test run. This time, the orbiter would deploy a lander and rover for a gentle landing. They were bound for the side of the moon that we can see, to a spot near its south pole, a place other spacefaring nations, including the United States, are eyeing for its potentially numerous reservoirs of frozen water—an indispensable resource for a future moon base.

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MOONPublished September 09, 2019 Last Update 4 hrs ago

Vikram Moon lander: The anxious wait for a signal from lunar surface

By James Rogers | Fox News

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Scientists in India are attempting to make contact with the Vikram probe after its nerve-wracking descent to the surface of the moon last week.

The Indian Space Research Organization lost contact with the uncrewed probe when it was in the final stage of an audacious moon-landing attempt Friday.

However, K Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, confirmed Sunday that the lander had been spotted. He told the Times of India that the space agency's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has spotted Vikram on the lunar service. ISRO is analyzing the data, he said.

INDIA FINDS MISSING VIKRAM PROBE ON THE SURFACE OF THE MOON

"It must have been a hard landing," The Press Trust of India news agency quoted Sivan as saying Sunday.

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Communication with the unmanned lander was lost when it was just 1.3 miles from the lunar surface.

“All the systems and sensors of the Lander functioned excellently until this point and proved many new technologies such as variable thrust propulsion technology used in the Lander,” said ISRO, in a statement Saturday.


However, it is not yet clear what damage the lander suffered during its descent. The U.S., Russia and China are the only other countries to have successfully landed on the moon.

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