New Delhi:
NASA has located 2 unmanned spacecraft orbiting the moon, including India's Chandrayaan-1, which went missing in 2009.
Scientists used a new ground radar to locate one active and one dormant spacecraft orbiting the moon.
Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said, "We have been able to detect NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [LRO] and the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar"
Locating Chandrayaan-1 was more of a challenge because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August 2009. Chandrayaan-1 is small -- about half the size of a smart car which makes its detection even more noteworthy.
Chandrayaan-1 was launched in October 2008 but radio contact with it was lost in August 2009.
The Chandrayaan-1 mission performed high-resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible, near infrared, low energy X-rays and high-energy X-ray regions.
One of the objectives was to prepare a three-dimensional atlas (with high spatial and altitude resolution) of both near and far side of the moon.
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