ISRO Will Wait Another 14 Days To Get Signals From Vikram, Pragyan, S Somanath Says ‘Don't Know When…'
Indian Space Research Organization will wait another 14 days to establish contact with Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander and Pragyan rover. ISRO will continue attempts to revive the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover till the next sunset on the Moon which is slated for October 6. However, ISRO Chief S Somanath said that it is not certain when the contact with Chandrayaan-3 instruments will be established.
ISRO Chief Chief S Somanath on Saturday said, “We don’t know when it will wake up. It could be tomorrow, or it could also be on the final day of the lunar day. But we are trying. It will be a great achievement if the lander and rover wake up,"
The major challenge for ‘Vikram and Pragyan’ would be to come back in action after surviving the chilling -200 degrees Celsius of temperature. If the onboard instruments survive the low temperature on the Moon, the modules can come back to life and continue their mission to send information from the moon for next fourteen days.
S Somanath while speaking about Chandrayaan-3 testing had told Hindustan Times, “Rover has been fully tested. But a lot of the design is similar for Pragyan and Vikram. This means that the tests that worked for Pragyan should also work for Vikram,"
After conducting experiments on the moon from August 23 to September 4, the rover and lander modules of Chandrayaan-3 were put to sleep in a bid to survive the extremely frigid atmosphere at the south pole of the moon.
If ISRO is able to revive the lander and the rover, the information that is derived from experiments that could once again be conducted by the Chandrayaan-3 payloads would be a "bonus". Former ISRO scientist Tapan Mishra said that confirming the presence of water would be the next important thing.
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