“Efforts have been made to establish contact with the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up status. So far, no signals have been received from them. Efforts will continue to establish contact,” ISRO said late on Friday.
More than two weeks ago, when the space agency sent commands to put Vikram and Pragyan to sleep, it said it hoped they would wake up on September 22.
Chairman of ISRO S Somanath “The lander and rover should wake up automatically, we have kept some circuits alive for this. But we will have to wait and see,” he told TOI when Vikram and Pragyan went to sleep.
“We have not heard anything yet,” a senior scientist associated with the mission told TOI. However, the scientist added that there was still a lot of time and that the team was in a good position.
Isro Space Applications Center (SAC) Director Nilesh M Desai told TOI on Friday that the wake-up may happen later tonight (Friday) or even tomorrow (Saturday), and the wait continues.
While the moon’s sunrise occurred early Wednesday, the systems on Vikram and Pragyan need certain conditions to wake up. Sankaran, director of the UR Rao Satellite Centre, the main hub of Chandrayaan-3, had earlier explained to TOI: “…in order to wake up, we need to generate power and temperature on the elements on Vikram and Pragyan to meet certain parameters. We know something by September 21 or 22. If they wake up, they will wake up during this time.
This is in addition to obtaining the correct sun elevation angle from 6 degrees to 9 degrees. Whether the two get a second life on the moon or not, the Chandrayaan-3 mission is a success as all mission objectives were achieved during its mission period.
The mission’s stated goals were: to demonstrate a safe and smooth landing, walk around the rover, and conduct scientific experiments on site.
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