“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 agency said today.
“Efforts to establish contact will continue,” it added.
Meanwhile, Union Minister of State Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh said that this could be due to the prolonged spell of cold weather conditions during which temperature drops below -150 degree C.
“Chandrayaan 3 Update: For the last several hours, Team #ISRO making best effort to establish contact with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition after the sunrise on Moon. As of now, no signal has been received from them so far. This could be possibly because of prolonged spell of cold weather conditions upto -150 degree C during the just concluded lunar night of 14 Earth days. However, efforts to establish contact shall continue,” Dr Jitendra Singh wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
The Chandrayaan-3 lander, ‘Vikram’, touched down on August 23 at the uncharted lunar South Pole making India the first country to do so. After transversing over 100 meters on the lunar surface from the Shiv Shakti Point, the touchdown spot of the Vikram lander on the lunar surface, the Pragyan Rover was safely parked and set into sleep mode on September 2, ahead of the lunar night setting in on Earth’s only natural satellite. If ISRO is able to revive them as the Sun rises on the Moon again, information that is derived from experiments that could once again be conducted by the Chandrayaan-3 payloads would be a “bonus”.
The lander and rover — with a total mass of 1,752 kg — were designed to operate for one lunar daylight period (about 14 Earth days) to study the surroundings there. However ISRO is hoping that they will come back to life when the Sun again rises on the Moon, and carry on with the experiments and studies there.
The lander touched down near the south pole of the Moon on August 23, successfully completing one of the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s main objectives of soft landing on lunar surface. Subsequently, the 26 kg six-wheeled rover had descended from the lander’s belly on to the Moon’s surface, using one of its side panels, which acted as a ramp.