Sriharikota: After the historic ‘soft landing’ at the challenging lunar South Pole, Chandrayaan 3, a mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), is now striving for an unexpected achievement – the revival of its lander Vikram and rover Pragyan. These components worked diligently for approximately 14 Earth days before being placed in sleep mode. The decision to put them to sleep, with the rover entering sleep mode on September 2 and the lander on September 4, was made due to the harsh cold conditions that enveloped the lunar surface in the absence of sunlight.
With the anticipation of a new lunar dawn approaching on Friday, ISRO is gearing up for the challenging task of awakening the lander and rover, even though they were not originally designed for such reactivation. The primary objective now is to determine whether the equipment has endured the extreme cold conditions, as nighttime temperatures on the lunar surface can plummet to as low as -200°Celsius, and at the poles, these temperatures can plunge even further, reaching around -250°C.
Prior to transitioning the equipment onboard Vikram and Pragyan into sleep mode, ISRO officials took precautions by ensuring that the batteries, which rely on solar power, remained charged and the solar panels were positioned to receive sunlight at dawn.
Although the mission’s initial design envisaged operation for just one lunar daylight period (approximately 14 Earth days) to conduct scientific observations, ISRO is optimistic about the possibility of reactivating the lander and rover as the Moon experiences another sunrise. Nilesh Desai, Director of ISRO’s Space Applications Centre (SAC), expressed hope, stating, “We’ll be trying to revive both the lander as well as the rover on 22nd September, and if our luck is good, we will have a revival of both this lander and rover and we’ll get some more experimental data which will be useful for us to further investigate the Moon’s surface.” This ambitious attempt reflects ISRO’s determination to extract additional valuable insights from this lunar mission.