Chennai, Sept: ISRO Chairman K Sivan today said all efforts to reach Vikram lander have failed.
Speaking to mediapersons at the Chennai airport, he said though they are not able to make contact with Vikram, the orbiter is performing fine as expected.
”There are eight equipment in the orbiter and they are functioning as expected. Our next focus is on Gaganyan and are working on it,” he said.
Lander Vikram, with rover Pragyan housed inside it, lost communication with the ground station on 7 September during its final descent, just 2. 1 kms above the lunar surface, minutes before the planned touch-down on the Moon.
Since then, the Indian Space Research Organisation has been consistently saying all possible efforts were being made to establish contact with the lander, though the hopes kept fading with the lunar night phase approaching. It was stated that the lander made a hard landing.
The lander, designed to execute a soft-landing on the lunar surface, and rover have a mission life of one Lunar day, which is equivalent to 14 earth days that ends Saturday.
ISRO has said once the Lunar night falls, there would be no sunlight for the lander to generate power for its working and also it was not designed to operate in the heavy cold temperature of Moon during the phase.
The space agency had on Thursday said a national-level committee comprising academics and ISRO experts are analysing the cause of communication loss with Chandrayaan-2 lander.