Chandrayaan had already done 95% of its tasks: ISRO

MUMBAI: India’s lunar honeymoon is over, at least for
now.

At 1.30am on Saturday, ISRO’s crestfallen scientists and engineers, who have slogged over the country’s first moon mission Chandrayaan-1, lost radio contact with the spacecraft
orbiting about 200 km above the moon’s surface.

Data from Chandrayaan-1’s last orbit was transmitted until 12.25am on Saturday to the Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu near Bangalore. Though project director Mylswamy Annadurai was quoted as saying the ‘‘mission is over’’, Isro chief spokesperson S Satish said the space agency has not quite declared it dead as yet. Isro chairman Madhavan Nair claimed the spacecraft was ‘‘recoverable.’’

But Satish admitted to TOI that Isro was neither able to transmit data to the spacecraft nor receive information. ‘‘Only after analyzing the data will we able to declare whether the mission should be formally called off or not,’’ he said.

Though it was slated to be a two-year mission, Nair said that nearly 95% of Chandrayaan’s scientific goals had already been accomplished in less than a year. At Rs 386 crore, the mission that put India in the global space league of six nations, was launched at 6.22am on October 22.

Though Chandrayaan-1 was slated to be a two-year mission, Isro chairman Madhavan Nair said that nearly 95% of Chandrayaan’s scientific goals had already been accomplished in less than a year.

Having completed bulk of the scientific mission, Isro chief spokesperson S Satish said that even if Chandrayaan-1 had remained in orbit for another year, nothing much would have been gained. ‘‘In the hostile lunar environment, it is impossible for a spacecraft to survive for long periods,’’ he said.

Though there was no officals word on the cause of the loss of contact, space experts, who declined to be identified, said it could be due to a power problem in the spacecraft, or the spacecraft being hit by a some space object.

Chandrayaan-1’s ride has been a bumpy one in the last few months. There was an overheating problem necessitating the deactivation of some of the 11 payloads. Then on April 26, the star sensor started malfunctioning which affected the spacecraft’s orientation.