14 September 2019 | New Scientist | 5ONCE again, an attempt to land
on the moon hasn’t gone to plan.
On 6 September, the Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO) lost
contact with the Vikram lander
during its attempt to set down on
the surface. It initially appeared
that the craft had crashed, just five
months after Israel’s Beresheet
lunar lander faced a similar fate.
Vikram is a part of the
Chandrayaan 2 mission, which
launched from the Satish Dhawan
Space Centre in India on 22 July.
The mission also includes an
orbiter that is circling the moon
and a rover called Pragyan carried
inside the lander.
Most of the descent went
smoothly. But when Vikram was
just 2 kilometres above the
surface, it started to diverge fromthe planned trajectory. Shortly
afterwards, the lander lost contact
with Earth and may not have been
able to slow itself enough to touch
down safely.
On 8 September, ISRO said that
a thermal image had been taken of
the lander by the orbiter. As New
Scientist went to press, there were
reports that the lander was intact
and lying on its side – but these
hadn’t been confirmed by ISRO.
The agency hasn’t re-established
communication with Vikram.
The spacecraft was intended
to touch down near the moon’s
unexplored south pole, where no
lander or rover has been before.
This region is interesting because
its craters contain areas that are in
permanent shadow, where water
ice can remain frozen.Ice is important for human
space flight because it can be used
to make rocket fuel and support
astronauts. That is why NASA’s
plan to put humans on the lunar
surface again in 2024 also involves
landing near the south pole.
Chandrayaan 2’s orbiter
remains in position around the
moon, where it was intended to
relay data from the lander and
rover back to Earth as well as
taking measurements of its own.
The orbiter itself is carrying
eight scientific instruments,
which will still be used to map
the moon’s surface and to study
its atmosphere. ❚India lost contact with its lunar lander as it neared the surface
and is trying to establish what happened, reports Leah CraneMedical techProsthesis helps
you feel each step
AN ARTIFICIAL leg with
built-in sensors is helping
people walk better.
The first two users of
the prosthesis also had
less phantom limb pain,
the condition in which
amputees get sensations
that seem to come from
their missing limb (Nature
Medicine, doi.org/dbbh).
Stanisa Raspopovic at the
Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich and his
team made the prosthesis
using a commercially
available artificial leg. They
added sensors on the sole of
the foot and inside the knee
that could be connected by
wires to nerves in a user’s
thigh. ❚ Clare WilsonSurgerySupercooled livers
may aid transplants
DONOR livers can be kept
outside the body for much
longer thanks to a new
supercooling method.
The technique lowers
the organ’s temperature
below 0 ̊C without forming
damaging ice crystals inside
it (Nature Biotechnology,
doi.org/dbbj). This means
livers can be kept for up
to a day and a half, which
could boost the number
of transplants carried out.
The method could also be
used on other organs, says
Reinier de Vries at Harvard
Medical School.
Currently, livers can only
be stored for 12 hours,
limiting the distance they
can be transported. ❚ CWMoonshot goes wrong
News
MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/GETTY
Turtle vs dinosaur
Surprising fossil may
have been flattened
by a sauropod pAncient footprints
Extraordinary site
reveals Neanderthals
were as tall as us pPesticide with bite
An insecticide made
from spider venom
could help bees pPuzzle cracked at last
How to describe the
number 42 as the sum
of three cubes pFlashbang bot
Robots could be used
by police to distract
suspects pThe press await news
of Vikram’s landing at a
tracking facility in India