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SCIENCE

to compare it with images of the same area before the crash around the impact location and has announced the sighting on
to find signs of the lander. The first person to come up with a the NASA and ASU pages where you have been given credit for
positive identification was Chennai-based IT professional your observation.”
Shanmuga Subramanian, who confirmed the identification “I apologise for the delay in getting back to you. We needed
of the crashing site of Vikram by comparing before and after to be certain of our interpretation of the observation as well as
images. “The debris first located by Shanmuga is about 750 making sure that all stakeholders had an opportunity to com-
metres northwest of the main crash site and was a single bright ment before we could before we could announce the results.
pixel identification in that first mosaic,” NASA said. Congratulations for what i am sure was a lot of time and effort
on your part,” the scientist in his letter to Subramanian who
fter receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the shared it on Twitter.
identification by comparing the before and after images. While it cannot be said that Subramanian was not cred-
A “When the images for the first mosaic were acquired ited him for his find, many said that he had “helped” NASA
the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily find the lander, or that the space body had discovered the
identifiable,” NASA said in a statement, adding that two sub- missing lander.
sequent image sequences were acquired on October 14 and 15, Indeed, even NASA had tweeted earlier saying that “the
and November 11. The LROC team scoured #Chandrayaan2 Vikram lander has
the surrounding area in these new been found by our @NASAMoon
mosaics and found the impact point about The debris, first mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance
2,500 feet to the southeast of the planned Orbiter.”
touchdown site, and a spray of debris em- located by Chennai- Anand Mahindra meanwhile took to
anating outward. based IT professional Twitter to call out those who he believes
The November mosaic had the best are not giving due credit to Subrama-
pixel scale (0.7 metre) and lighting condi- Shanmuga nian. On December 3, the Chennai techie
tions (72 degrees incidence angle), NASA Subramanian, is about had tweeted stating that NASA had cred-
said. “The November mosaic shows best ited him “for finding Vikram Lander on
the impact crater, ray and extensive de- 750 m northwest of Moon’s surface”.
bris field. The three largest pieces of debris the main crash site Mahindra responded to the tweet
are each about 2x2 pixels and cast a one by asking why Subramanian was not
pixel shadow,” the statement said. and was a single bright getting the credit he deserves. “Why
On October 3, Subramanian, a Chen- pixel identification aren’t the headlines reading ‘Indian
nai-based mechanical engineer, had engineer discovers Vikram Lander debris.
tagged the twitter handles of NASA, in that first mosaic. NASA confirms finding?’ Can’t we give
LRO and ISRO in a tweet, asking, “Is this Subramanian told a enough credit to our own tech wizards?”
Vikram lander? (1 km from the landing he asked.
spot) Lander might have been buried television channel that However, not everyone was in agree-
in Lunar sand?”. On November 17, he fur- ment. As one Twitter user put it, “He used
ther zeroed in on his observations and he used only his laptop NASA’s images to find location. Now
tweeted out the possible crash site of to find the images do you think it’s possible without those
the lander. maps?” “Don’t be salty,” the user told
“This might be Vikram lander’s crash Mahindra.
site (Lat:-70.8552 Lon:21.71233 ) & the ejecta that was thrown out The latter however had a ready response. Citing India’s
of it might have landed over here … (The one on the left side was ancient invention of the concept of ‘zero’, Mahindra said that in
taken on July 16th & one on the right side was from Sept 17),” he that case “every prize-winning mathematician should give the
said in a tweet accompanying the images. As it turns out, Sub- credit to India”.
ramanian was spot on with his inferences, and now NASA has Ever since ISRO lost contact with Vikram, NASA had made
lauded him for finding the lander. “NASA has credited me for several attempts to locate the Chandrayaan-2 lander with
finding Vikram Lander on Moon’s surface VikramLander Chan- the help of its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The LRO flew
drayaan2,” Subramanian said in another tweet. over Vikram’s landing site once on September 17 and next on
“Thank you for your email informing us of your discovery of October 14.
debris from the Vikram lander. The LROC team confirmed that Chandrayaan-2 mission to the Moon was launched in July.
the location does exhibit changes in images taken before and Had the spacecraft reached the surface in one piece on Septem-
after the date of the landing,” said deputy project scientist Lunar ber 7, India would have been only the fourth country to success-
Reconnaissance Orbiter mission John Keller. “Using this infor- fully put a lander on the Moon.
mation, the LROC team did additional searches in the area and
located the site of the primary impact as well as other debris LETTERS@TEHELKA.COM

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