Story highlights Scientists use a new ground radar to locate the spacecraft

New technology is crucial to future moon missions

(CNN) It made history as India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft. Then it vanished.

Scientists used a new ground radar to locate the two spacecraft -- one active and one dormant, NASA said Thursday.

"We have been able to detect NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [LRO] and the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar," said Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission's navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located."

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