AGENCIES: India’s attempt to become the first nation to land a spacecraft near the Moon’s unexplored south pole has apparently ended in failure.
The Chandrayaan-2 approached the Moon as normal until an error occurred about 2.1km (1.3 miles) from the surface, officials said.
India’s Space Research Organization (Isro) said it lost contact seconds before the ship was expected to land.
India would have been the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the Moon.
The country’s first Moon mission – Chandrayaan-1, in 2008 – carried out the first and most detailed search for water on the lunar surface using radars.
What happened?
Chandrayaan-2 entered the Moon’s orbit on 20 August and was due to make a controlled descent to the surface early on Saturday, Indian time, over a month after it first took off.
Staff at mission control were glued to the screens at Isro’s Bangalore space centre as the spacecraft made its descent towards the surface.
The control room burst into applause during the so-called rough breaking phase of the descent, with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi watching the action from behind a glass screen.
Details were unclear in the minutes after the apparent failure.
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