Launching satellites into space may be an exact science, but the results are not always that exact. Eight years ago, India launched a spacecraft that was supposed to orbit the moon, but it vanished from all communication and was considered lost in space. However, NASA has located it.
It made history as India’s first unmanned lunar spacecraft. Then it vanished.
Nearly a decade later, NASA has located two unmanned spacecraft orbiting the moon, including India’s Chandrayaan-1, which went quiet in 2009.
Scientists used a new ground radar to locate the two spacecraft, one active and one dormant, NASA said Thursday.
“We have been able to detect NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [LRO] and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar,” said Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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