NASA’s LRO set to provide crucial images, information on Vikram Lander
New Delhi, Sep 16: On Tuesday, NASA is likely to provide more information on the Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan-2 which lost contact with ISRO on September 7.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is expected to release images of the lander, the US media reported.
Norah Petro, LRO's project scientist told spaceflightnow.com that NASA will share any before and after flyover imagery of the area around the targeted Chandrayaan-2 Vikram Lander landing site to support analysis by the ISRO.
Despite passing Moon landing shock test, Why did Chandrayaan 2's Vikram Lander go silent?
This information would be crucial as the window of opportunity to gain contact with the lander closes in a few days from now. Lander Vikram, with rover Pragyan, housed inside it, lost communication with ground-station early on September seven during its final descent, just 2.1 km above the lunar surface, minutes before the planned touch-down on the Moon.
Efforts to re-establish the link has been going on since then. On September 8, ISRO said the lander was spotted on the lunar surface by camera on-board of the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. Vikram had 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 equivalent to 14 earth days -- that means ISRO now has just over a few days to spring Vikram back to life.
"Progressively, you can imagine that it becomes that much more difficult, with each passing hour, the available power on the battery gets drained out, and there won't be anything left for it to power and operate", an ISRO official told PTI.
"With every passing minute, the situation becomes worse only...less and less probable (to establish contact with Vikram", he said.
"It looks more and more remote only", the official said when asked if there was a slender chance of re-establishing the link.
A team at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network here has been desperately trying to restore the link with the lander.
"With the right orientation, it can still generate power and recharge batteries with solar panels. But it looks less and less probable, progressively," the official said.
Another
top
ISRO
official
said
"hard-landing"
of
Vikram
on
the
Lunar
surface
has
made
the
task
of
linking
again
with
it
that
much
difficult
as
it
may
not
have
the
"right
orientation
(to
receive
signals)".
"Impact
shock
may
have
caused
damage
to
the
lander,"
he
claimed.
Hopes fade: ISRO has just one week to establish contact with Vikram Lander
ISRO has not RPT not commented on the condition of the 1,471-kg lander of Chandrayaan-2 -- first Indian mission to explore the lunar terrain with home-grown technology -- and named after Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme.
Chandrayaan-2's 27-kg rover Pragyan, which translates to 'wisdom' in Sanskrit, a six-wheeled robotic vehicle.
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The lander carried three scientific payloads to conduct surface and subsurface science experiments, while the rover carried two payloads to enhance our understanding of the lunar surface, according to ISRO.