The present status of Vikram Lander on the Moon’s surface is ambiguous. News agency PTI quoting an unamed ISRO official reported that the lander was intact, but was slightly tilted in one direction. In the evening, ISRO office sources said that they were not confirming this report.

Chandrayaan-2’s lander Vikram had a hard landing on September 7 and an ISRO official told PTI that the lander was “intact and not broken”. He also said that “it is in a tilted position. Though the lander hit the Moon’s surface hard while landing, it was still very close to the scheduled touchdown site as per the image sent by the orbiter’s onboard camera”.

Whatever may be the status, ISRO scientists are trying to their best to re-establish contact with Vikram lander. Science, after all, is a game of infinite probabilities. It is not necessary that every experiment or mission should succeed or come up to expectations. There is no need to abandon a dream only because of a single failure. There is always a next opportunity.

Our scientists and engineers at ISRO have done a commendable job over the years. In their first attempt (Chandrayaan-1) they sent our spaceship up to a distance of 384,440 kilometres to the Moon, and in the second attempt, the lander was in contact till 2.1 km above the Moon’s sufrace. Vikram, after all, landed on the Moon, though it cannot be called a soft landing.

It is true that we could not fulfill our aim to bring out the rover Pragyan on the lunar surface, due to this last minute glitch, but nevertheless we can say that our path is correct, our technology is reliable and we shall overcome whatever small obstacles that remain, in our next mission.

The entire nation is proud of our ISRO scientists and engineers. They truly deserve our congratulations. We must keep their morale high, and above all, we should trust their capabilities.

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