India’s first lunar lander falls silent just before touchdown
India’s space agency was attempting a moon landing unlike any other—but now, the world waits to hear the spacecraft's fate.
An Indian spacecraft’s unprecedented attempt to make a soft, controlled landing in the moon’s south polar region has ended in excruciating silence: Shortly before touchdown, the robotic lander Vikram—part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission—fell out of contact with mission control. The Indian Space Research Organization, India’s space agency, says that the spacecraft stopped communicating with Earth when it was within 1.3 miles of the lunar surface.
“The Vikram descent was as planned, and normal performance was observed, up to an altitude of 2.1 kilometers,” said Kailasavadivoo Sivan, ISRO’s chairman, in a statement roughly half an hour after signal loss. “The data is being analyzed.”
In addition to setting a global first, a successful landing would have made India just the
