Washington: Vikram had a "hard landing", NASA said on Friday, as it released high-resolution images captured by its reconnaissance orbiter of the Moon's unchartered south pole where the Chandrayaan 2 lander attempted to soft-land during the ambitious mission three weeks ago. The module had attempted a soft landing on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters before losing communication with ISRO on September 7. The site was about 600 km from the south pole in a relatively ancient terrain, according to the US space agency.

Our @LRO_NASA mission imaged the targeted landing site of India’s Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram. The images were taken at dusk, and the team was not able to locate the lander. More images will be taken in October during a flyby in favorable lighting. More: https://t.co/1bMVGRKslp pic.twitter.com/kqTp3GkwuM

— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2019

"Vikram had a hard landing and the precise location of the spacecraft in the lunar highlands has yet to be determined,¿ the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. The scene was captured from a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Quickmap fly-around of the targeted landing site image width is about 150 kilometres across the centre." Vikram was scheduled to touch down on September 7. This event was India's first attempt to soft land on the Moon and could have propelled it into a select club of countries to have landed on the lunar surface. After Vikram lost contact with ground stations, just 2.1 km above the touchdown site, the possibility of establishing contact with the lander had a deadline of September 21, because after that the region entered into a lunar night.