India experienced heartbreak early this morning. Millions stayed awake into the wee hours of the morning, hoping to see the Chandrayaan-2 Mission make it to the lunar surface. Instead we were met with silence from the lander, and uncertainty in the final minutes.
What should have been a resounding success was not. And yet, this wasn't a failure of a mission, as many are quick to assume. Things didn't go according to plan, but hope still remains that Chandrayaan 2's Vikram lander and the Pragyaan rover inside it are saved.
ISRO Chairman K Sivan - Images courtesy: ISRO
ISRO Chairman K Sivan made a general announcement shortly after the space agency lost contact with the Vikram lander. He said they'd lost contact, and they were going over the flight data to see what happened.
Since the spacecraft got disconnected from HQ in the final moments, it's possible that there's simply a communication issue and that the lander touched down safely. It's not necessarily very likely, but it is possible. And if the lander is still in working condition, if it's upright, and if ISRO can get comms back online, we're good to go.
ISRO heads, hours before the mission derailed
ISRO didn't falter on an easy task, not by a long shot. There have been over 30 satellites launched to the Moon that never reached, or didn't make it in one piece, and the lunar surface is littered with their carcasses. Just recently the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed mere minutes before it was supposed to touch down, also because they lost connection to the spacecraft.
Eventually, they lost contact when the Vikram lander was just 2.1 km above the Moon's surface. But this minor blip will be a huge learning curve for ISRO's scientists, no doubt, and don't forget India's space agency still has the best track record in terms of launching successful missions in space compared to any other space agency on the planet.
What ISRO was trying to attempt was a "soft landing", in order to not damage any instruments on board the lander. To do that they had to first begin braking at 30 km up, then perform "fine braking" at a height of about 7 km. This would let the aircraft slow down enough so it could drift down the last few feet just using microgravity.
That's because you can't fire rocket boosters too low to the ground or it could topple it with the blowback, or even obscure the solar panels with dust. That's obviously very tricky, and it's why Sivan called it the "15-minute window of terror".
ISRO headquarters in Begaluru
The Vikram lander and its cargo, most notably the Pragyan rover, was important for lunar surface experiments, no doubt. However, it wasn't the only ISRO hardware going up into lunar space. The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter will remain in space for at least the next year, making passes across the Moon and gathering invaluable data. In comparison, the lander and rover were expected to only function for a single lunar day, or about 14 Earth days. As such we may have lost that battle but the pursuit of science continues.
The Vikram lander while being assembled
Just because we've failed to land a spacecraft on the Moon doesn't mean that's the end of things. It took the NASA dozens of missions before it was able to put a lander on the Moon back in 1967. The Apollo missions needed 11 tried before they managed to get men on the Moon. Now that ISRO got 99 percent of the way, they know exactly what needs to be changed and what's working perfectly.
Also, we shouldn't forget that the entire Chandrayaan-2 mission had an ISRO budget of around Rs 978 crore. From this, around Rs 603 crore went for the development of the orbiter, lander, and rover, along with the navigational and ground support network. Remaining Rs 375 crore went to create the GSLV Mk III rocket. But when you compare this with NASA's mission it costed almost 20 times less than similar launches by NASA.