“With Each Passing Minute, The Situation Only Gets Worse,” ISRO Officials On Relinking With Vikram Lander
Mumbai: The hope of connecting with Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan 2 mission is fading day by day, as a week left for ISRO to get back its lander from South Pole region in Moon surface.
Chandrayaan 2’s Vikram Lander which lost its contact from ISRO centre in Bengaluru early on September 7 during its final descent, just 2.1 km above the lunar surface, minutes before the planned touch-down on the Moon.
An attempt to re-establish the link has been going on ever since.
On 8 September, ISRO stated that the on-board camera of Chandrayaan-2 orbiter saw the lander on the lunar surface.
Vikram had a hard-landing. The lander is designed to carry out a soft landing on the lunar surface, and the rover has a lunar day mission life, equivalent to 14 Earth days – that means Isro now has just over a week to spring Vikram back to life.
An ISRO official explained, “Progressively, you can imagine that it gets more difficult, with each passing hour, the available power on the battery runs out, and anything for its operation and operation There will be no remaining.”
“With each passing minute, the situation only gets worse … less and less probable (to establish contact with Vikram”, he said.
“It only looks more and more remote”, the official said, asking if there was a slim chance of re-establishing the link.
A team from ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network is trying desperately to restore the link with the lander.
“With the right orientation, it can still generate electricity and recharge batteries with solar panels. But it looks less and less likely, progressively,” the official said.
Another top ISRO official said that Vikram’s “hard-landing” on the lunar surface made reconnecting it very difficult as it may not have the “correct orientation (to receive the signal)”.
“Impact shock may have caused damage to the lander,” he claimed.
Lander carried three scientific payloads to conduct surface and subsurface science experiments, while Rover carried two payloads to increase our understanding of the lunar surface according to ISRO.
(With PTI Inputs)
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