'No hope of waking up lander and rover now'

NT Bureau, Agencies

Bengaluru: There is now no hope of waking up the Chandrayaan-3's moon lander and rover, an eminent space scientist said on Friday, signalling a possible end to India's third lunar mission.

Space Commission member and former ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar, who was actively associated with the mission, told PTI: "No, no, there won't be any more hope of reviving. Now, if it should have happened, it should have happened by now. There is (now) no chance at all."

The ISRO said on September 22 -- after a new lunar day began -- efforts have been made to establish communication with solarpowered 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, it had said then. With the Chandrayaan-3 mission, India scripted history on August 23 becoming the first country to touch down near the lunar south pole; and the fourth in the world to achieve soft-landing on the lunar surface after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

The national space agency headquartered here had put the lander and rover into sleep mode, on September 4 and 2, respectively, before the sun set on the moon, hoping for their awakening at the next sunrise around September 22.

The lander and the rover are designed to operate for one lunar daylight period (about 14 earth days).

According to ISRO officials, all the three Chandrayaan-3 mission objectives -- demonstration of a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, and demonstration of the rover roving on the moon and undertaking of in-situ scientific experiments on the lunar surface by its payloads and that of the lander -- have been achieved.

After landing on the moon, scientific payloads of the lander and the 26- kg six-wheeled rover had perfor med experiments one after the other so as to complete them within 14 earth days, before the pitch darkness and extreme cold weather engulfed the Moon.

ISRO officials had said that if it was able to reestablish communication with the lander and rover, it would be a "bonus".