No signals have been received from the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover of the Chandrayaan 3 mission despite efforts to establish communication in order to ascertain their wake-up condition, said the Indian Space Research Organisation on Friday. The ISRO further said that the efforts to establish contact will continue.
Taking to their official ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter handle, ISRO said, “Chandrayaan-3 Mission: Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition. As of now, no signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue”.
The Vikram Lander of India’s Chandrayaan-3, which was accompanied by the Pragyaan rover was about to wake up from sleep mode today. This would take the Indian Space Research Organisation’s mission to its second phase. Both the lander and the rover were put into sleep mode on September 4 and 2 respectively, ahead of the lunar night setting in on Earth’s only natural satellite. However, their receivers were kept on
If the lander wakes up and becomes operational again, it would mark another milestone for India and will also enable the spacecraft to perform the same experiments over and over again.
“Sunrise is expected to have occurred at the Shiv Shakti point today and soon Vikram and Pragyan will be receiving usable amounts of sunlight!☀️⚡️ #ISRO will now wait for them to heat up above a certain temperature before beginning attempts to re-establish communications with them on 22 Sept. #Chandrayaan3,” ISRO had earlier said in a post on X.
On September 2, the ISRO informed that the Pragyan rover aboard Chandrayaan-3 “completed its assignments” on the surface of the Moon and is now “safely parked and set into sleep mode”.
Since September 4, when sunset occurred at the Shiv Shakti point – the Vikram and Pragyan have been in complete darkness.
ISRO’s Space Applications Centre Director Nilesh Desai had earlier told PTI, “We have put both the lander and rover on sleep mode because temperature would go as low as minus 120-200 degree celsius. From September 20 onwards, sunrise will be going on at the Moon and by September 22 we hope that the solar panel and other things will be fully charged, so we will be trying to revive both the lander and rover”.
Union Minister of State for the Ministry of Science and Technology, Dr Jitendra Singh took to his official ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter account to share an update on the Chandrayaan 3 mission. He said that ‘prolonged spell of cold weather conditions upto -150 degree C during the just concluded lunar night of 14 Earth days’ could be a possible reason behind not receiving any signal from the lander and rover so far.
Since its landing on August 23, both Pragyan and Vikram sent a repository of data to ISRO, some of which has been made public by the agency.
India became the fourth country to touch the lunar surface and the first to ever reach the south pole of the moon.
Following the success, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the ISRO scientists at the space agency’s headquarters in Bengaluru, named the landing point of the Vikram Lander as ‘Shivshakti’.
(With inputs from agencies)