Sept 7 - Vikram Lander Lost, More Top Stories

September 7 Vikram Lander Lost,  More Top Stories by:

A Chandrayaan-2 team member reacts, after contact with the Vikram lander is apparently lost moments before its scheduled touchdown on the moon Saturday morning. Image via ISRO.

Contact with India moon lander lost before touchdown India's Chandrayaan-2 moon orbiter released its Vikram lander to the lunar surface Saturday morning (Friday, according to clocks in the Americas). However, contact with the lander has apparently been lost. The lander was in the final stages of a 15-minute powered descent to the moon’s surface, just 1.3 miles (2.1 km) above the surface, when contact abruptly broke off. Although, at this writing, no official statement about the loss has yet been placed on Chandrayaan-2's update page, statements from India's prime minister strongly suggest the landing has failed. If, on the other hand, Vikram has not crashed - if contact is regained - it would make India the 4th nation on Earth to achieve a soft landing on the moon, after the former Soviet Union, the United States and China. Read more. Will the Webb telescope be able to detect life signs at nearby planets? The James Webb Space Telescope is Hubble's successor, due to launch in 2021. Scientists have debated the question of whether the Webb will be powerful enough to detect life signs in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. Now a new study says, yes, the Webb will be able to analyze the atmospheres of the 7 Earth-sized planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, 39 light-years away. Read more.  Ka-bam! Signs of a giant impact with Jupiter  Scientists used Juno spacecraft data and models of how Jupiter’s inner core should look to probe the giant planet’s early history. They now think an object with 10 times Earth’s mass might have struck Jupiter billions of years ago. Read more. What we're reading   From the New York Times … On Dorian-battered island, what's left? Virtually nothing No schools. No banks. No gas stations. No supermarkets. No restaurants. No churches. No pharmacies. No hardware stores. No water, no electricity and no phone lines. In this part of the Bahamas, nearly everything is gone. Read more. More top stories Why Dorian was so destructive Wow! Night skies and petroglyphs When did humans start altering Earth? September guide to the bright planets Could microbes be affecting Venus' climate? ALMA images show what's happening beneath Jupiter's storms Have astronomers found a hyper-volcanic exomoon? Monster penguin was as tall as a person

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Tonight and tomorrow night ... Moon near Saturn Look for golden Saturn in the vicinity of the moon as darkness falls. Read more.

Dorian weakens as it speeds north NOAA's GOES-East satellite page reported this morning: "Dorian producing tropical storm force winds in southeastern Massachusetts … Hurricane conditions expected in portions of Nova Scotia later today … As of 2 a.m. EDT Saturday, September 7, the center of Dorian was [moving] NE at 25 mph. The minimum central pressure was 960 mb with maximum sustained winds of about 90 mph." View rainfall totals from Dorian here. Submit your photo to EarthSky here! Did a friend forward EarthSkyNews to you? Click here to get your own subscription!

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