Landing approach: India loses contact with the lunar module

The unmanned Indian moon mission "Chandrayaan-2" has apparently failed. The Indian Space Agency claims to have lost communication with its lander "Vikram" shortly before its first planned moon landing. The approach to the moon had been normal up to 2.1 kilometers above the surface, said the head of the Indian Space Agency Isro, Kailasavadivoo Sivan, at night on Saturday (local time). The available data would be evaluated.

India had tried to become the fourth country to succeed in a controlled landing on Earth's satellite - after the US, the Soviet Union and China. An Israeli probe crashed in the spring on the moon in the spring after a technical error.

For India, it is the second mission to the moon. The first lunar probe "Chandrayaan-1" was launched in 2008 and had orbited the moon without landing on it.

The landing at the south pole of the Earth's satellite was the hardest part of the unmanned mission "Chandrayaan-2", as the head of the Indian Space Agency said. "Chandrayaan" in Sanskrit means "moon vehicle". The goal of the 142 million dollars (about 126 million euros) expensive mission was to map the surface of the South Pole region, to analyze the soil and to seek water. In the region, the Chinese probe "Chang'e 4" landed in early 2019.

At the beginning of July, a first attempt to launch the "Chandrayaan-2" had to be stopped just one hour before the start. There had been a leak on the launcher. On July 22, the start had worked.