After a two-week lunar night ended, India’s space agency announced it had been unable to receive signals from the country’s lunar lander and rover.
“Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition,” the India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on X on Friday.
Because of the two-week lunar night, the lander and rover went into hibernation. ISRO has pledged to keep trying to make touch.
India made headlines last month as the first nation to successfully land a moon mission on the moon’s south pole using a soft landing.
In other news, India has completed its lunar mission and put the rover to sleep.
After touching down, the Pragyan rover began exploring the area and sending back photographs to Earth. According to the organisation, it “completed its assignments,” and the Vikram lander “exceeded its mission objectives.”
Vikram “will fall asleep next to Pragyan once solar power is depleted and the battery is drained,” the space agency said on September 4. Ideally, they’ll start waking up somewhere around September 22, 2023.
Jitendra Singh, India’s Minister of Science and Technology, said on Friday night that the space agency was doing everything it could to make touch with the Vikram and Pragyan “to ascertain their wake-up condition after the sunrise on the Moon.”
He speculated that the “prolonged spell of cold weather conditions up to minus 150C (minus 238F)” during the moon night could be to blame for the absence of signal reception.
