Chandrayaan-2, India’s ambitious lunar mission, successfully reached the Moon but lost its lander during the final descent on September 6, 2019. The Vikram lander crashed into the lunar surface after communication was lost at just 2.1 kilometers above the ground. While the landing failed, the mission’s orbiter survived and has been circling the Moon ever since, far outlasting its original one-year lifespan.
The Mission and Its Components
India’s space agency ISRO launched Chandrayaan-2 on July 22, 2019, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The mission had three parts: an orbiter designed to circle the Moon and study its surface, a lander named Vikram, and a small rover called Pragyan that Vikram was supposed to deploy after touching down near the lunar south pole. The entire mission cost roughly $125 million, making it one of the most cost-effective deep space missions ever attempted.
After launch, the spacecraft spent several weeks raising its orbit around Earth before entering lunar orbit in late August. On September 2, the Vikram lander separated from the orbiter and began preparing for its descent to the surface.
What Went Wrong During Landing
On September 6, 2019, Vikram began its powered descent toward the Moon’s south polar region. For the first several minutes, everything looked normal. All mission parameters stayed within expected ranges as the lander dropped through its braking phase, slowing itself from orbital speed. Then, at 20:23 UTC, roughly 15 minutes into the landing sequence and just 2.1 kilometers above the surface, communication with Vikram cut out abruptly.
Trajectory data showed that Vikram maintained a normal descent path down to about 2.2 kilometers, but deviated sharply upon reaching 2.1 kilometers. Analysis of the failure points to a power depletion event, likely involving the lander’s battery or solar panels, which would have shut down the onboard computer and thrusters simultaneously. Without functioning thrusters to control its descent, Vikram lost stability and slammed into the Moon at high speed.
ISRO initially hoped to re-establish contact with the lander but was unable to do so. The Pragyan rover, still housed inside Vikram, was never deployed.
Finding the Crash Site
For weeks after the crash, the exact fate of Vikram remained uncertain. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter eventually located the impact site and debris field at coordinates 70.8810°S, 22.7840°E, at an elevation of 834 meters. The clearest images came from a November flyover with 0.7-meter pixel resolution, which revealed debris scattered across the surface near the intended landing zone. The discovery confirmed that Vikram had broken apart on impact rather than surviving in a damaged state.
The Orbiter’s Ongoing Success
While the landing grabbed headlines, the orbiter has quietly become the mission’s real achievement. It carries eight scientific instruments and settled into a circular orbit 100 kilometers above the lunar surface. ISRO originally planned for it to operate for one year, but precise launch and fuel management extended its expected lifespan to nearly seven years.
The orbiter’s radar instrument has been particularly valuable. It uses dual-frequency signals to peer beneath the lunar surface and detect water ice particles trapped in the soil near the Moon’s poles. Data from this instrument, combined with earlier findings from the Chandrayaan-1 mission, has strengthened evidence that water ice exists in permanently shadowed craters near both lunar poles. The orbiter also maps mineral composition and studies the Moon’s thin outer atmosphere, contributing data that other space agencies have drawn upon for their own lunar planning.
How the Failure Shaped Chandrayaan-3
ISRO used the Vikram crash as a blueprint for redesigning its next attempt. The most fundamental change was philosophical: Chandrayaan-2 used what ISRO’s chief described as a “success-based design,” which assumed everything would go right. Chandrayaan-3 switched to a “failure-based design,” engineering the lander to handle things going wrong at every stage.
Several specific fixes addressed the problems that doomed Vikram. The acceptable landing zone was expanded from a tight target to a 4 kilometer by 2.5 kilometer area, giving the lander flexibility to touch down safely anywhere within that zone if conditions turned abnormal. The lander carried more fuel so it could handle trajectory deviations or even fly to an alternate landing site if needed. The navigation system was also simplified. Instead of calculating its landing spot in real time during descent, the Chandrayaan-3 lander compared camera images against pre-stored reference data and only made a final correction to avoid obstacles larger than 30 centimeters. This eliminated the complex last-minute computations that contributed to Chandrayaan-2’s problems.
Those changes paid off. On August 23, 2023, Chandrayaan-3’s lander touched down successfully near the lunar south pole, making India the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon and the first to land in the south polar region.