Our Orbiter Located Vikram Lander First: ISRO Chief

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief KSivan on Wednesday said that the Indian Space agency had already located itearlier. He said this a day after NASA announced it had located the debris ofChandrayaan 2 lander.

Sivan, while quoted by news agency ANI said, "Our ownorbiter had located Vikram Lander, we had already declared that on our website,you can go back and see."

ISRO's website has an entry dated September 10 that reads as, "Vikram lander has been located by the orbiter of Chandrayaan 2, but no communication with it yet. All possible efforts are being made to establish communication with the lander."

However, ISRO had not made the images public.

US space agency NASA had Tuesday said that it hadlocated the lander Vikram of India's second moon mission Chandrayaan-2, aroundthree months after ISRO lost contact with it.

NASA released an image acquired by its LunarReconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) on November 11, marking pieces of debrisclose to the proposed landing site of the Chandrayaan-2 lander.

NASA said that it was able to locate the debris after a tip-off by Shanmuga Subramanian, a 33-year-old mechanical engineer, and app development from Chennai.

According to reports, Subramanian spent sleeplessnights over the next 45 days trying to locate the debris. He said that he usedto return from work at 8 pm. After dinner, he would start comparing the NASAimages till 2 am and would again scan the photos till 8 am.

Early on October, Subramanian located a tiny spotwhich he believed was part of the Vikram lander's debris. He tweeted about itand informed Isro and Nasa. On Tuesday, Nasa tweeted confirming thatSubramanian was spot on.