India’s Vikram lander does not appear to have survived “15 minutes of terror” in its attempt to land on the moon. At 4:50 p.m. EDT on September 6, the Indian space agency (ISRO) announced that they had lost contact with the spacecraft.
The lander was supposed to touch down at about 4:24 p.m. EDT in a spot closer to the moon’s south pole than any other craft has reached.
The final powered descent, from 30 kilometers above the lunar surface to what should have been a soft landing in an unnamed spot between two craters, was supposed to take about 15 minutes. “We are doing it for the first time, so that is why we call it 15 minutes of terror,” ISRO chairperson Kailasavadivoo Sivan had said in a television interview before the landing attempt.
After the spacecraft had gone through several braking stages during its descent, the ISRO control room went quiet as the expected moment of landing came and went. A tense half hour later, Sivan announced that the spacecraft was not communicating with Earth.