A graduate of the Government College of Engineering in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, Subramanian works for an “L & IT Architect” in Chennai.
“I am crazy about rockets from my childhood and never missed watching a rocket launch on television until I reached college. That got interested and hooked me in space exploration always,” he wrote in an email.
Shanmuga Subramanian, the Chennai-based engineer who has been credited by NASA after he alerted them about the presence of the debris of the lander of Chandrayaan 2, said he had alerted both the US space agency and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Shanmuga Subramanian lives in Tamil Nadu’s Chennai and hails from Madurai, India. He has worked for Cognizant, an American multinational corporation that provides IT services, in the past and is currently working with Lennox India Technology Centre.
Shanmuga Subramanian, the techie who has been credited with the “discovery of debris from the Vikram lander”, has become the subject of interest for the press. US space agency NASA declared on Monday that it had located the Chandrayaan-2 moon lander Vikram. The Space agency also said that it was helped by the effort of Shanmuga Subramanian, who had been doing his separate research on the Vikram lander
Shanmuga used lunar images from Nasa’s Moon’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) clicked on different dates in September, October and November. He studied the images for weeks before declaring his findings.
Soon after he was sure of his findings, he wrote to NASA about it, the US space agency took its time to confirm the findings. Nasa’s deputy project scientist (LRO mission) John Keller wrote back to Shanmuga congratulating him and confirming his claim.
After confirming the news, NASA tweeted, “The Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander has been found by our NasaMoon mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See the first mosaic of the impact site.”
“It was quite hard, but (I) spent some effort,” Shanmuga has tweeted on October 3. Finally, almost after 3 months, NASA confirmed the Vikram lander debris location by comparing before and after images and credited Shanmuga for the same.
“Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with positive identification of debris. After receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images,” the agency said, crediting Shanmuga for finding debris identified as “S”.
“I worked hard tracking the intended path of Vikram lander. I am excited. It was lots of hard work. I’ve always had a passion for space science. I would never miss a launch”, Shanmuga said
