Chandrayaan-3: What if the Lander-Rover doesn’t wake up again? ISRO replied
New Delhi. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is trying to restore communication with Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover after it fell asleep earlier this month. ISRO announced in a post on September 2.
The space agency said ‘APXS and LIBS payloads are off. Data from these payloads are transmitted to Earth via the lander. Currently, the battery is fully charged. The solar panels are oriented to receive light at the next sunrise, expected on September 22, 2023. The receiver is switched on. The Vikram lander was decommissioned after successfully completing a short ‘hop’ and ‘exceeding its mission objective’. Both modules were put into sleep mode for the lunar night, which is equivalent to about 14 days on Earth.
What will happen if the rover and lander of Chandrayaan-3 do not wake up?
While putting the lander and rover to sleep, ISRO said that if neither of them wakes up, they will ‘stay there forever as India’s lunar ambassadors.’ The space agency wrote ‘Hope for a successful launch for the second set of assignments! Otherwise, it will always be there as India’s lunar ambassador. On September 22, when lunar sunrise was expected, ISRO tried to establish contact with the rover and lander, but was unsuccessful.
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Attempts to establish contact will continue
ISRO said in a post on Twitter, ‘An attempt was made to establish contact with the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover to confirm their wake status. Currently no signal is received from them. Attempts to establish contact will continue. Experts are optimistic that rovers and landers can wake up in the morning, citing the examples of China’s lunar lander Chang’e-4 and rover Yutu-2, which resumed operations in 2019 after surviving their first lunar night.
Was designed to work for 14 days only
But former ISRO chairman AS Kiran Kumar told the BBC that Chandrayaan-3’s lander and rover do not need to wake up because the moon’s temperature drops to -200 to -250 degrees Celsius at night and requires batteries. Recharged. Not designed for this. Should not be stored or handled at such extreme temperatures. Former ISRO scientist Tapan Mishra told news agency ANI that the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover were originally designed to run for 14 days.
It would be great if he woke up
He said that if they survive the first lunar night, they can survive more nights. Mishra said, ‘If it survives one lunar night, I am sure it will survive for many more lunar nights and it can probably work for 6 months to a year. It would be a very good thing.
