| Title | Time is Running Out for India to Establish Contact With its Lunar Lander | |
| Date | Monday September 16 2019, @07:41AM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the putting-a-brave-face-on-it dept. | ||
Time is running out for engineers from the Indian space program to establish contact with the troubled Chandrayaan-2 lunar lander.
[...] Communications were lost with the lander during this time and have not been re-established since.
Officials at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) were able to locate the lander on the moon last week, and they have been trying to re-establish communications with the hope of saving either the Vikram lander or the Pragyan rover inside it. There is a time window they need to consider, however. The lander and rover were both designed to last for one lunar day, which is the equivalent of 14 days here on Earth. With a week passed since the landing date, the ISRO engineers have only one more week to get in contact with the lander before it runs out of power.
Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/india-lunar-lander-time/
From www.space.com
[...] ISRO officials have not yet released the Chandrayaan-2 image of Vikram on the lunar surface or described the potential condition of the lander. But they have said that despite the lander's presumed failed moon landing, the craft has already demonstrated key technologies for future missions.
"The Vikram Lander followed the planned descent trajectory from its orbit of 35 km (22 miles) to just below 2 km above the surface," ISRO officials wrote in an update Saturday (Sept. 7). "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."
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printed from SoylentNews, Time is Running Out for India to Establish Contact With its Lunar Lander on 2024-04-23 18:56:09