Bengaluru: Former ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Saturday the Chandrayaan-2 has achieved 95 per cent of its mission objectives, the lander’s unsuccessful bid to touch-down on the Lunar surface notwithstanding.
The former Secretary in the Department of Space and ex-Space Commission Chairman noted that the orbiter is healthy and functioning normally in the Lunar orbit, and that Chandrayaan-2 had multiple objectives, including soft-landing.
“I think we need not worry too much…I will rate more than 95 per cent of the mission objectives have been achieved,” Nair told PTI after lander ‘Vikram’ lost contact with ground-stations during final descent to the Lunar surface in the early hours of Saturday.
“Already, orbiter is in space and it should do an excellent job of mapping”, he added. Chandrayaan-2, a follow-on mission to theChandrayaan-1 mission undertaken more than a decade ago,comprises an orbiter, lander (Vikram) and rover (Pragyan).
The 2379-kg orbiter, with designed mission life of one year, carries eight scientific payloads for mapping the lunar surface and study the exosphere (outer atmosphere) of the Moon. The orbiter payloads will conduct remote-sensing observations from a 100 km orbit.
According to ISRO, the lander carried three scientific payloads toconduct surface and subsurface science experiments, while therover carried two payloads to enhance our understanding of the lunar surface.
Nevertheless, Nair said the lander’s contact-loss was highly disappointing, and he never expected such a scenario. “It’s disappointing for all of us. The entire country was looking forward to it.”
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