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The Vikram lander hasn\u2019t woken up on the surface of the moon<\/p>\n
ISRO<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is still attempting to re-establish communications with its Chandrayaan-3 mission\u2019s moon lander and rover, but experts say hopes are fading as suspicions grow that the spacecraft have succumbed to brutally cold temperatures during the lunar night.<\/p>\n
ISRO\u2019s Vikram lander touched down on the surface on 23 August before releasing the Pragyan rover. Both craft successfully carried out their scientific experiments and transmitted data back to Earth, and the mission had already proven a great success.<\/p>\n
But after the landing, senior engineers said they were confident that the craft would be able to survive the lunar night and carry out more work. Around two weeks after the mission began \u2013 one single period of lunar daylight \u2013 both devices went into \u201csleep mode\u201d and prepared for conditions as low as -238\u00b0C that could destroy their electronic components.<\/p>\n
Following a long wait, the lunar terminator \u2013 the line between night and day \u2013 crossed the Chandrayaan-3 landing site around 22 September, bathing the craft in sunlight and theoretically allowing them to use their solar panels to charge their batteries and boot up their onboard computers once again. But there have been no signs of life.<\/p>\n
ISRO tweeted on 22 September that it had been attempting to establish contact with the craft without success. Since then, it has provided no further updates and ISRO\u2019s press office didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment. On 25 September, former ISRO chief A. S. Kiran Kumar told the BBC<\/em> that the \u201cchances of reawakening are dimming with each passing hour\u201d.<\/p>\n David Cullen at Cranfield University, UK, says it shouldn\u2019t be considered a failure if Vikram and Pragyan don\u2019t wake up, as the Chandrayaan-3 mission was designed to achieve its objectives in a single lunar day.<\/p>\n He says that designing craft to survive the vast temperature swings between lunar night and day, which can cause batteries and electrical components to literally crack as they expand and contract, can involve measures like adding radiation sources to provide warmth \u2013 but these also add complexity, cost and weight. Often, it is more pragmatic to land a leaner, simpler craft that quickly carries out science before the brutally cold nighttime temperatures destroy it, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cTo make sure it can survive is an enormous engineering challenge,\u201d says Cullen. \u201cSo quite a few missions will be designed with no serious expectation of surviving the lunar light. And then if, by some chance, you do survive the lunar night, it\u2019s a nice added-on extra.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt would seem logical to assume that if it didn\u2019t respond during its second lunar day, then, when it comes to the third lunar day, the chances of responding are significantly less,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Sarah Casewell at the University of Leicester, UK, says it is now unlikely that the craft will reawaken. \u201cYou maybe expect some little bit of delay because things don\u2019t warm up as fast as you\u2019d like or, you know, there\u2019s awkward shadows. But by now, I think you would have expected everything to have warmed up, so it sounds as though the cold was maybe too much.\u201d<\/p>\n But she says that the project should be considered a huge success. \u201cThey\u2019ve done everything they set out to do,\u201d says Casewell. \u201cHow inspirational is this for a nation that has a relatively young space programme? I think that is just phenomenal, that\u2019s such an achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n