India’s Vikram Lander Crashed into the Moon

ISRO has provided an update on its failed attempt to place Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover on the moon:

“The Vikram Lander followed the planned descent trajectory from its orbit of 35 km to just below 2 km [1.25 miles] above the surface. All the systems and sensors of the Lander functioned excellently until this point and proved many new technologies such as variable thrust propulsion technology used in the Lander.

The success criteria was defined for each and every phase of the mission and till date 90 to 95% of the mission objectives have been accomplished and will continue contribute to Lunar science , notwithstanding the loss of communication with the Lander.

ISRO stressed that the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter continues to circle the moon and is expected to return a wealth of scientific data:

Chandrayaan-2 mission was a highly complex mission, which represented a significant technological leap compared to the previous missions of ISRO, which brought together an Orbiter, Lander and Rover to explore the unexplored south pole of the Moon.

Since the launch of Chandrayaan-2 on July 22, 2019, not only India but the whole world watched its progress from one phase to the next with great expectations and excitement.

This was a unique mission which aimed at studying not just one area of the Moon but all the areas combining  the exosphere, the surface as well as the sub-surface of the moon in a single mission.

The Orbiter has already been placed in its intended orbit around the Moon and shall enrich our understanding of the moon’s evolution and mapping of the minerals and water molecules in the Polar Regions, using its eight state-of-the-art scientific instruments.

The Orbiter camera is the highest resolution camera (0.3m) in any lunar mission so far and shall provide high resolution images which will be immensely useful to the global scientific community. The precise launch and mission management has ensured a long life of almost 7 years instead of the planned one year.

Editor’s Note: People have been taking comfort in the fact that the Orbiter is functional and that carries the majority of the mission’s scientific instruments. It is a significant improvement over India’s first mission, the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter.

However, if the goal was to merely repeat the first mission with a larger and better suite of instruments, Chandrayaan-2 would not have garnered the attention and excitement it did. The landing is really was set this mission apart in terms of achievement, complexity and risk.

The lander and rover were primarily engineering tests; the science was important but secondary. The goal was to land, deploy the rover and return data from their scientific instruments for one lunar day (14 Earth days). Unlike China’s Chang’e-4 rover that has been exploring the lunar far side since Janauary, they were not designed to survive the frigid lunar nights.

If this part of the mission had succeeded, ISRO would be in a position to send larger and more sophisticated landers and rover with better instruments that would be capable of surviving on the surface longer. In much the same manner way, Chandrayaan-1 paved the way for the Indian spacecraft that is now orbiting the moon.

So, the failure is a significant one. India can take pride in making the attempt, and solace in the fact that the Orbiter is healthy and returning data. I’m sure ISRO will learn from this failure and return to the surface of the moon successfully.