NASA Spacecraft 'Pings' India's Chandrayaan-3 Lander on Moon

Laser instrument onboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting the Moon has successfully pinged the Vikram lander of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, the US space agency said.

The laser beam was transmitted and reflected between the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and an Oreo-sized device on Vikram lander, opening the door to a new style of precisely locating targets on the Moon’s surface, NASA said.

The lander was 100 kilometers away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the Moon’s south pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses toward it on December 12 last year. After the orbiter registered light that had bounced back from a tiny NASA retroreflector aboard Vikram, NASA scientists knew their technique had finally worked.