As India awaits message from Moon, memories arrive from Mars

It's been three days since the Indian space agency ISRO kept their metaphorical eyes and ears wide open, awaiting a signal from the re-awakened Chandrayaan-3. However, there has been no telemetry data coming from the Vikram Lander thus far, WION has learned.

Telemetry data is a technical term that refers to the regular status update and health report that a spacecraft sends back to its controllers on Earth. While all is silent on the Moon, memories have arrived from Mars, as September 24th, 2014 is when India's maiden Mars Orbiter Mission Mangalyaan entered Martian orbit and began circling the red planet.

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Launched on November 5th, 2013, on board the PSLV rocket, Mangalyaan continues to be India's furthest foray into space as the craft traveled almost 10 months in space to reach its destination which was 401 million kilometres away.

For context, India's moon missions in the Chandrayaan series traveled a distance of 3.84 lakh kilometres. The craft entered Martian orbit on September 24th, 2014 and served its scientific purpose and mission until September 2022. Designed for a mission life of six months, the craft lived for nine years and provided valuable scientific data about the Red planet.

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As far as Chandrayaan-3 is concerned, it's been three days since September 22nd, which has been the expected re-awakening date. While the deep space antennae of ISRO and the partner agencies from abroad are peering at the moon to receive any signal emissions from the Vikram lander, there is no progress so far.

ISRO plans to wait out the entire duration of the Lunar Day (which ends in the first week of October), to see if Chandrayaan-3 will have a second lease of life.

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It must be remembered that Chandrayaan-3 has been a complete success and the mission's 14-day (1 Lunar day) planned life ended on a high note after the lander was made to perform a hop test on the moon.

ISRO knew fully well that surviving the Lunar night(where temperatures could fall to minus 200 degrees Celsius), was very tough and challenging. All lunar missions that are meant to survive the Lunar night are equipped with a Radioisotope thermoelectric generator(a sort of Nuclear battery).

However, Chandrayaan-3 doesn't have such a device that would both power it and keep it warm through the night. This is because India hasn't developed such a technology, so far. The possible re-awakening is nothing more than a bonus or a life extension for the already completed mission.

One might ask why ISRO did not consider insulating the Lunar lander and rover to survive the night, but any such alteration would change the design and drastically increase the payload mass of the spacecraft and pose challenges to the launch mission.

This is because India's LVM3 rocket has a payload-lifting capability of 4 tons to high-earth orbits and payloads have to be within that limit. The Chandrayaan-3 craft(comprising propulsion module, lander, and rover) weighed a little over 3.9 tons, so the payload capacity of the vehicle was utilized almost entirely.

Reports say that the rear wheels of the Pragyan rover were not able to make a clear imprint of the Indian National emblem and the ISRO logo on the Lunar surface, owing to lumpy soil. The imprinting of the logos on the Lunar surface depends on a lot of factors - the type of soil at the site, the mass of the rover, the depth of the impression on the wheel, etc.

It must be remembered that the Pragyan rover weighed only 26kgs and with lunar gravity being 1/6th that of Earth, it would weigh less than 4.5kgs there.

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