A NASA spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, has passed over the mission’s intended landing site, on a high plain near the south pole, several times since September. But initial analyses of the images did not reveal an obvious impact scar comparable to the Beresheet lander launched by Israel this year, which crashed in April. NASA scientists noted that the spacecraft might have been hidden in the shadows.

A lot of people were looking, including Shanmuga Subramanian, an Indian computer programmer and mechanical engineer.

“The crash landing of Vikram rekindled an interest in the moon not only for me and others also,” he wrote in an email. “I think even if Vikram had landed and sent some images, we would have never had such interest. For the first few days I was scanning the images randomly and there were lot of false positives.”

After reviewing the last known velocity and position of Vikram, Mr. Shanmuga shifted where he was looking. He noticed a white speck on the lunar surface that was about two-thirds of a mile from where Vikram was supposed to have set down. That speck was not visible in an earlier image. He wondered if the crash might have buried the lander in the lunar soil.