ISRO tries to establish contact with Chandrayaan-3 lander, rover; no signal received

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Friday said that it made efforts to establish communication with Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover.

In order to determine their activation conditions. However, no signal had been received. ISRO tweeted, “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.”

The space research organisation also said that efforts to establish contact will continue.

ISRO on Friday planned reactivate the lander and rover, which were placed in ‘sleep mode’ for approximately 16 Earth days before the lunar night enveloped the south pole of the Moon. The reactivation comes as the temperature on the moon rises to above minus 10 degrees Celsius, a condition that will activate the vital communication circuit known as the “wake-up circuit.”

Vikram lander touched down near the south pole of the moon on August 23, successfully completing one of the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s primary objectives of soft landing on the lunar surface. Both lunar mission modules functioned effectively for around 10 Earth days. The rover entered sleep mode on September 2, followed by the lander on September 4.

Earlier on Friday, Director of Space Applications Centre Nilesh Desai said that the reactivation of the rover and lander were postponed for Saturday. He said, “Earlier we planned to reactivate the rover and lander on the evening of 22nd September, but due to some reasons we will now do it tomorrow on 23rd September. We have a plan to take out the lander and rover from the sleep mode and reactivate it. We had a plan to move the rover to almost 300-350 metres. But due to some reasons we couldn’t. The rover has moved 105 metres till now. Last time, we moved it for 10 days on the surface of the moon.”

Desai added that significant data was taken by the rover and was received by ISRO. “The data has been archived and the scientists are working on it,” he said.