Chandrayaan-3’s historic landing on the moon’s south pole on Wednesday has come after a lot of hard work, said ISRO chief S Somanath. “Everyone is jubilant. We were all very confident about the soft landing,” he said immediately after Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the premier space agency for “the new flight of new India”.
In an exclusive interview to CNN-News18, Somanath said ISRO has learnt a lot from past experiences as India’s mission to the moon started from Chandrayaan-1. The predecessor of India’s third moon mission, the ambitious Chandrayaan-2, had failed to achieve its desired soft landing in September 2019.
The ISRO chief said all the hard work of the past four years has paid off and now it remains to be seen how the Vikram lander functions on the lunar surface for the next 14 days. “We have to check the lander for the rover to come out in the next few hours, it can also take a day depending on the conditions. We will be monitoring the condition of Chandrayaan-3 for the next 14 days.”
Somanath further said the Vikram lander made the exact touchdown as expected. “We are all excited to see it has reached a situation so we can conduct further experiments. We were very sure about it. We were following the track and trajectory… We were always comfortable,” he said.
He added: “The Chandrayaan journey started with Chandrayaan-1. It is the journey of last so many years… Reaching up to the moon itself was a big challenge, one which we perfected in Chandrayaan-1 and, later, in Chandrayaan-2, we did it… Now, too, we could do the launching as well as capturing the orbit but the challenge of landing was always an enigma. So this time, we did it successfully we are extremely happy about it.”
Somanath also acknowledged the contribution of a generation of leadership and scientists of ISRO for the Chandrayaan-3’s success, and said the achievement is an “incremental progress” and “a huge one”. Prime Minister Modi, too, lauded the scientists for their efforts.
“Chandrayaan-2 craft is still working and doing lot of communication work with us — and all the team that contributed to building Chandrayaan 1 and 2 should be remembered and thanked, while we celebrate Chandrayaan-3. This is an incremental progress and definitely a huge one,” he added.
Later, addressing the ISRO team at the Mission Operations Complex, Somanath thanked all those who prayed for the mission’s success, and ISRO veterans like AS Kiran Kumar, the space agency’s former chief. “They have been helping so much, they were part of the team to help them to get the confidence and get the reviews done, and to ensure that nothing goes with any mistakes,” he added.
India only the fourth country to touch down on the lunar surface and the first to reach its uncharted south pole, which is of great interest to scientists. The lunar module comprises the Vikram lander and the 26-kg rover Pragyan.
(With PTI inputs)
Comments
0 comment