Battle to wake up spacecraft
ON SEPTEMBER 2, the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover were put into sleep mode due to depleting solar power at the landing site. The lander and rover were scheduled to start working again on September 22. However, they missed their wake-up call.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) posted on its Facebook page: Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition. No signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue.
According to theguardian.com, hopes are fading for the re-awakening after Indian scientists were unable to make communication with the spacecraft since it went into shutdown mode to survive the freezing lunar night conditions. The temperatures near the south pole can dip below -200°C.
“Scientists at the Isro said they were confident the spacecraft could survive the extreme conditions and that it would reawaken about 22 September, when it would again be bathed in sunlight and solar panels could recharge its batteries.
“However, Isro scientists have been unable to make contact with the robots since and said hopes are dimming for their revival. According to scientists, there is around a 50% chance that the devices could endure the freezing temperatures," reported the website.
“Efforts to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyaan rover will continue,” said Isro on X, formerly Twitter, but it has made no announcements since then.
The website thewire.in said that according to experts, the chances of reawakening were dimming.
As Kiran Kumar, the former Isro chief, reportedly told the BBC, the lander and rover had many components which might not have survived the night-time temperatures.
“Unless the transmitter on the lander comes on, we have no connectivity. It has to tell us that it’s alive. Even if all other subsystems work, we have no way of knowing that,” he said.
As the world awaits a sign of life from the dormant spacecraft, the mission has contributed valuable lunar surface data, with the presence of sulphur being detected.
As hopes dimmed of further contact, the country’s space chief said he was satisfied with the prospect of calling its successful lunar mission to an end, reported AFP.
“It is okay if it does not wake up because the rover has done what it was expected to do,” S Somanath said. “As of now, no signals have been received from them.”
The world’s most populous nation had been steadily matching the achievements of established space-faring powers at a fraction of their cost, said AFP.
It had a comparatively low-budget space programme, but one that had grown considerably in size and momentum since first sending a probe to orbit the moon in 2008.
India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars in 2014 and is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into the Earth’s orbit by next year.
It launched a four-month mission in August towards the centre of the solar system to study phenomena on the surface of the sun.
The successful lunar mission came four years after its predecessor crashed on final descent, in what was seen at the time as a huge setback for its space programme.
According to Time, a Chinese scientist said claims about India becoming the first country to put a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and breaking China’s record for the southernmost lunar landing, were overstated.
Ouyang Ziyuan, lauded as the father of China’s lunar exploration programme,
told the Chinese-language Science Times newspaper the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, at 69 degrees south latitude, was nowhere close to the pole, defined as between 88.5 and 90 degrees.
“On Earth, 69 degrees south would be within the Antarctic Circle, but the lunar version of the circle is much closer to the pole. It’s wrong!” he said of claims for an Indian polar landing.
“The landing site of Chandrayaan-3 is not at the lunar south pole, not in the lunar south pole region, nor is it near the lunar south pole region.”
The Chandrayaan-3 was 619km distant from the polar region, Ouyang had reportedly said.