It must have been a hard landing: Sivan
BENGALURU: The Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram module has been located on the lunar surface and it must have been a hard-landing, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said on Sunday, in an admission that the planned soft-landing wasn’t successful.
“Yes, we have located the lander on the lunar surface. It must have been a hard-landing”, Sivan told PTI.
The image of the lander Vikram with rover ‘Pragyan’ housed inside it was captured by on-board camera of Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, which is healthy, safe and functioning normally in the intended orbit around the Moon.
The orbiter camera is the highest resolution camera (0.3m) in any lunar mission so far and shall provide high resolution images which will be immensely useful to the global scientific community, the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency had said earlier.
India’s bold mission to soft-land on the moon suffered a setback with the ‘Vikram’ module losing communication with ground stations, just 2.1 km from the lunar surface during its final descent in the early hours of Saturday.
Considered as the “most complex” stage of the country’s second expedition to the moon, the lander was on a powered descent for a soft landing when it lost contact.
The data is being analysed, the ISRO had said soon after.
Asked if the lander was ‘damaged” during the ‘hard landing”, Sivan said: “That we do not know”.
But some space experts said Vikram suffering damage in the hard-landing cannot be ruled out.
“It may not have landed at a desired level of velocity. It may not have landed on its four legs. Impact shock may have caused damage to the lander”, according to a space official.
“When the system does not work well, it (the lander) will go and hit the Moon. There is no ambiguity in that”, another veteran space expert said.
“Unless all the things are compensated…compensating gravity, it (the lander) will not come down smoothly and touch the surface. That’s the critical part of the whole maneuver”, he said.
Sivan had said on Saturday that the space agency would try to establish link with the lander for 14 days and reiterated on Sunday after it was located on the lunar surface by Chandrayaan-2’s on-board cameras that those efforts would continue.
He had said that Vikram lander’s descent was as planned and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1 km, but subsequently, communication from the lander to ground stations was lost. A senior ISRO official said time was running out and possibility of re-establishing communication looks “less and less probable”.
“Progressively…as time goes by…it’s difficult (establish link)”, the official said, but added that with the “right orientation” it can still generate power and recharge batteries with solar panels. “But it looks less and less probable, progressively”, the official said on condition of anonymity.
According to ISRO, 90 to 95 per cent of the Chandrayaan-2 mission objectives have been accomplished and it will continue contribute to lunar science, notwithstanding the loss of communication with the lander. (PTI)