Chandrayaan-1 director : moon surface stopping lander from signals

Pic/PTI

The obstacles on the lunar surface may be standing in the way for the lander from receiving the signals, Chandrayaan-1 Director Mylswamy Annadurai told ANI on Sunday.

"As we have located the lander on the lunar surface, we now have to establish contact with it. The place, where the lander alighted is expected to be not conducive enough for the lander to soft-land. There may be some obstacles, which could have been stopping us from establishing the connection," Annadurai was quoted by ANI as saying.

The same orbiter which located the lander has also been provided with a communication channel, which envisages such eventuality, he said in the ANI report. He suggested of a same line of side-channel to be used to establish the communication with the lander.

"In the past, the Chandrayaan's orbiter had beamed the signals towards the lander to establish signals, but in the present case, it has to be seen whether the latter receives it or not," the Chandrayaan-1 director added.

"There is always a two-way communication between the orbiter and lander, but we can attempt to communicate through one way." He, however, asserted that the communication established will not last for more than 5-10 minutes."It is a tricky situation but our scientists are capable enough to handle it," he assured.

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The chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) K Sivan told ANI that the agency had located the Vikram Lander, one of three components of the Chandrayaan-2, on the lunar surface and trying to re-establish contact after losing the connection minutes before its touchdown on the lunar surface in the early hours on Saturday. The location of Lander was found through a thermal image clicked by the Orbiter, which is already in the lunar orbit.

However, Sivan maintained that communication has not been established with the Lander and that the agency will try to establish it again in the next 14 days. The lander was 2.1-km away the moon's surface when it lost communication with the ground station at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru.

Chandrayaan-2 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 22 this year. After revolving around the earth's orbit, the spacecraft began its journey to the moon on August 14 and all manoeuvres were carried out to perfection until the last few minutes of landing.

With inputs from ANI

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