NEW DELHI: Former ISRO chairman K Sivan said "it is not the end of the story for Chandrayaan-3 mission as a lot of data is left to be processed" even though the lander and rover of India's third Moon mission have yet to awaken in the lunar South Pole after the Sun rises again on the Moon at the end of the lunar night (equivalent of 14 Earth days).
Sivan, who served as chairman of Chandrayaan-2 and provided guidance for Chandrayaan-3, said in an interview with TOI that "the design life of Vikram lander and Pragyan rover is practically over as they have completed all their mission tasks during the 14 Earth days." After the Sun rises on the Moon, ISRO is attempting to make contact with the lander and rover. Scientists will continue to experiment with it.
The previous ISRO chief stated, "These are precious data, coming from Chandrayaan-3. We are still analyzing the data from the Pragyan rover and the Vikram lander. These data will undoubtedly lead to new scientific discoveries. According to a recent TOI story, US university researchers looking at Chandrayaan-1 data discovered that high-energy electrons in Earth's plasma sheet were influencing weathering processes on the Moon's surface and may have helped water form on the lunar surface. I'm sure there is a much to be uncovered from the enormous amount of data that we collected from payloads on board Pragyan and Vikram if we are still discovering new science from Chandrayaan-1 data.
order to determine their wake-up condition, ISRO tweeted on Friday. No signals from them have been picked up yet. Contact-making efforts will continue. "Any information obtained from Chandrayaan-3 payloads would be made available to the general population. There would be no secrets, he promised.
According to a senior insider at ISRO, contacting the lander and rover is "automatic" and cannot be prompted from Earth. According to the source, "ISRO can only act when the signals from the lander-rover come."
The insider told TOI that the cold conditions at the South Pole may have caused a "connectivity problem in circuits" of the lander-rover, which is why we are unable to re-establish contact. The "hope of re-establishing link looks bleak" even though ISRO is continuously trying. The lander and rover's 14-day mission life is already complete, according to the source.
Just before the lunar night began, Sivan remarked that ISRO's "hop-up experiment" "was a good experiment. This process proved that we could launch from the Moon for the return trip, which was helpful.
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