AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan displays a model of Chanrayaan 2 orbiter and rover during a press conference at their headquarters in Bangalore, India, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019.
India's attempt at a soft lunar landing appeared to end in a crash on September 6 (September 7 in India), making it the second failed moon landing this year.
The mission's main spacecraft, Chandrayaan-2, has since spotted the Vikram lander's hapless hardware from its vantage point orbiting the moon. The lander arrived at the moon's south pole, seemingly in one piece, but India's space agency said it has been unable to restore communications.
Transform talent with learning that worksCapability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More The crash came just five months after an Israeli nonprofit's lander, called Beresheet, crashed into the moon's surface. In both cases, the fatal errors occurred the final stages of descent.
Robert Braun, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado, has worked on landing and descent teams for multiple NASA missions to Mars.
"Among all the things we do in space, landing is one of the more challenging aspects, because time gets greatly compressed," he told Business Insider. "There's very little margin to try something again if it didn't happen as planned."
Here's why the final stages of a moon landing are so challenging.