Lunar lander found lying on Moon’s surface after unexplained failure, Indian space agency says

'It must have been a hard landing'

Student walk past a screen during a live streaming of Chandrayaan-2 landing at an educational institute in Mumbai, India (REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas)

India's lost lunar lander has been found on the Moon, after an unexplained failure meant it crashed into the surface.

The Indian space agency is now desperately trying to make contact with the spacecraft, more than a day after it lost touch with the space station.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency cited Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K Sivan as saying cameras from the moon mission's orbiter had located the lander.

"It must have been a hard landing," the PTI quoted Mr Sivan as saying.

The space agency said it lost touch with the Vikram lunar lander on Saturday as it made its final approach to the moon's south pole to deploy a rover to search for signs of water.

A successful landing would have made India just the fourth country to land a vessel on the lunar surface, and only the third to operate a robotic rover there.

The space agency said on Saturday that the lander's descent was normal until 2km (1.2 miles) from the lunar surface.

The roughly 140 million dollar mission, known as Chandrayaan-2, was intended to study permanently shadowed moon craters that are thought to contain water deposits that were confirmed by the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008.

The latest mission lifted off on July 22 from the Satish Dhawan space centre in Sriharikota, an island off the coast of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

After its launch, Chandrayaan-2 spent several weeks making its way towards the moon, ultimately entering lunar orbit on August 20.

The Vikram lander separated from the mission's orbiter on September 2 and began a series of braking manoeuvres to lower its orbit and ready itself for landing.

Only three nations - the United States, the former Soviet Union and China - have landed a spacecraft on the moon.

Additional reporting by Associated Press