‘Sad It Was Just Debris’: Techie Shanmuga on Finding Vikram Lander

Chennai-based techie Shanmuga Subramanian was credited by NASA for discovering the debris of the lander, Vikram.

Chennai-based techie Shanmuga Subramanian was credited by NASA for discovering the debris of Vikram lander.

(Photo: The Quint)

Video Editor: Sandeep Suman

In the wee hours of 3 December 2019, Shanmuga Subramanian proudly added ‘I found Vikram Lander!’ to his Twitter bio, followed by a tweet from NASA crediting his contribution.

Subramanian is an I-T employee who works in Chennai. In his free time, he creates apps and websites and this discovery was yet another pet project of his.

“It was something challenging as even NASA can’t find out so why can’t we try out? And that’s the thought that led me to search for Vikram lander.”

Shanmuga Subramanian, Engineer

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had lost contact with the lander Vikram after its launch from Chandraayan 2 moon orbiter on 6 September while trying to make a soft-landing near the moon's south pole.

How Did He Locate Vikram?

Subramanian said the crash landing of Vikram which disappointed people across India got him hooked on to finding it. “Initially there was lot of false positives. I got corrected by Twitterati and one of the tweets led me to a Reddit forum where they had the exact intended landing location and the path of Vikram,” he said.

He said he deduced the location by comparing images and using data that is already in the public domain. “There were new images published by NASA about the landing location on 17 September so there were old images (also). LRO is an orbiter around the moon which for the last ten years has been taking images of each and every area of the moon. So I was able to compare the old images of the particular landing location with the new images,” he said.

Subramanian said that the anticipation was high after he sent his findings to NASA and was delighted when he received his due credit.

“(I even) thought about going public with all that information with much more data, but I think they (NASA) eventually confirmed it even before that. I do know it will take a lot of time and NASA is a public organisation and they should not be publishing something false. So they waited till 14-15 November when the illumination would have been much more,” he added.

“Though I am a little sad we were able to find only debris I think we should be happy that I, someone outside the domain, was able to find something out of the ordinary so I think this should inspire a lot of people.”

Shanmuga Subramanian, Engineer

He also said that he was able to verify his findings based on information from various forums such as Reddit and Twitter, “where there were a lot of radio-astronomers tracking Vikram's landing location and were saying a lot about what all radio frequencies it was broadcasting. I was getting a lot of information, so I was able to explore. Anyone would also be able to do the same, I would say.”

‘Already Done,’ Says ISRO on Spotting Lander Debris

Meanwhile, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chief K Sivan said that ISRO had already located the Vikram lander.

“Our own orbiter had located Vikram lander, we had already declared that on our website, you can go back and see.”

Sivan, ISRO Chief

When The Quint asked Shanmuga Subramanian if he had reached out to ISRO with his findings he said, “I just tweeted it out to them and didn't expect any response from them because there are a lot more important activities for them... lot of launches coming up... so they should be concentrating on that instead of replying to an amateur space enthusiast who might have tweeted out something wrong also.”

The engineer urged people to explore more and help the country in making great strides in space exploration.