ISRO chief rejects NASA claim on Chandrayaan 2, says our orbiter located Vikram lander first

New Delhi, Dec 04: Rejecting NASA's claims of locating the debris of the crashed Vikram Lander on the lunar surface, Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Sivan claimed that the Indian space agency's own orbiter had located the lander and declared it on its website.

"We had already declared that on our website, you can go back and see," Sivan was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

September 10, ISRO had tweeted, "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."

On Tuesday, The US space agency released an image taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) showed the site of the spacecraft's impact. The images also showed the associated debris field.

Further NASA added that a person named Shanmuga Subramanian had contracted the LRO project with positive identification debris and the first piece was found around 750 metres northwest of the main crash site.

Several attempts have been made to discover Vikram lander after the ISRO lost touch with the lander shortly before its scheduled landing on September 7.

Chandrayaan-2, a follow-on mission to the Chandrayaan-1 mission undertaken more than a decade ago, was one of the country's attempts to conquer the moon.

A successful soft-landing on the moon's surface would have made India only the fourth country to achieve the feat after the United States, Russia and China.

The ISRO is planning to launch Chandrayaan-3 probably in November next year.