NASA Ground-Based Radars Spot Two Missing Spacecrafts, Including India’s Chandrayaan-1 that Vanished from Lunar Orbit 8 Years Ago

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India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft made history when it was launched back in 2008. Barely a year later, the Chandrayaan-1 lost contact with ground stations while orbiting the moon. Now, nearly a decade later, the Indian spacecraft, together with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, have been located by ground-based radars.

CNN reports that the scientists at NASA utilized new ground-based radar to spot the two missing spacecraft. Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California says that they were able to detect NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 in lunar orbit using the aforementioned new ground-based radar.

The LRO, according to Brozovic, was relatively easy to find since they were working with the LRO mission's navigators and they had precise orbit data regarding the spacecraft's location. The Chandrayaan-1, on the other hand, was more challenging due to its size, and the fact that the last contact with the Indian spacecraft was way back in August 2009.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched on Oct. 22, 2008, and lost contact with ground-based stations last Aug. 29, 2009. The Indian lunar orbiter was credited with the first discovery of water on the moon.

The interplanetary radar is set to detect asteroids several million miles from Earth and mission operators were not sure that the radar can detect smaller objects located as far as the moon. NDTV reports that the interplanetary radar would be crucial to future missions.

Mission planners and organizers need to have a power tracking system to prevent accidents and collisions in outer space. In a statement, NASA suggests that the "ground-based radars could possibly play a part in future robotic and human missions to the moon, both for a collisional hazard assessment tool and as a safety mechanism for spacecraft that encounter navigation or communication issues."