Chandrayaan 2 - India's Quest For The Moon

NEW DELHI. Chandrayaan 2, India’s second mission to the Moon which was to land the Vikram rover on the Moon surface on 7th Sep 2019, faced a glitch at the proverbial last minute, just when it was 2.1km above the moon’s surface after successfully manoeuvring gravitational pulls and hazards for a little short of 400,000km.

- Gulshan Luthra and GP Capt Ajey Lele (retd)

Just before the planned automated touchdown, Vikram lost communication with the Chandrayaan orbiter, which of course continues to send pictures of the moon’s surface from its high-resolution cameras, and was able to track down the lost rover through its thermal imagers.

Over three days of search, it has also located the lander, confirmed that it had a hard landing, was intact but not oriented to restore links with the orbiter, and accordingly the Mission Control.

Perhaps, that means ISRO will have to make another attempt.

ISRO is still analysing what went wrong. It has a 14-day window – that is 14 Earth Days equal to One Lunar Day – to understand what went wrong with Vikram’s automated soft-landing programme, and what made it go wrong. Was there a natural surface upheaval, like a storm or a quake? Or whatever!

Communication with the Lander cannot be restored, assuming it has not suffered any damage, till it is oriented to receive signals from the orbiter above. ISRO has a lot of data to analyse, hoping the celestial order does not make its moonquest a farther dream.

Another landing project could take 3 or 4 years.

ISRO, which happens to mark 50 years of its inception, has done well nonetheless, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was present at the Mission Control for the final moments of the Chandrayaan mission, expressed admiration for the ISRO scientists and promised government’s support to realise India’s dreams.

Said ISRO: “Chandrayaan 2 mission was a highly complex mission, which represented a significant technological leap compared to the previous missions of ISRO to explore the unexplored.”