MUMBAI: We all know Chandrayaan-3 was a success, but not many are aware that two days after the landing of Vikram on Moon and rover Pragyan rolled out, one of the instruments on board the rover had a momentary blackout on August 25. Santosh Vadawale, who was the principal investigator of the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on the rover, said the instrument had switched off. “An investigation showed this was due to a late addition of a rover safety consideration. This inadvertently switched off the command of the APXS,” he said. The fault was quickly rectified and the instrument successfully carried out in-situ analysis of Moon’s soil and rocks.
Setting aside all doubts, Santosh Vadawale, who was part of the Chandrayaan-3 scientific team said that the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover were never designed to wake up.
Vadawale, who works at Isro’s Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, dismissed reports that Chandrayaan-3 was not a “complete success” since Vikram and Pragyan did not wake up after the dawn of the second lunar day on September 22. They were not designed to wake up, he said, reiterating that the mission was a complete success. Speaking on ‘Roaming on the moon’ at TIFR on Thursday, he said the Chandrayaan-3 payloads have provided “excellent scientific data” and APXS has given “fantastic information” which are being analysed in detail.
Setting aside all doubts, Santosh Vadawale, who was part of the Chandrayaan-3 scientific team said that the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover were never designed to wake up.
Vadawale, who works at Isro’s Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, dismissed reports that Chandrayaan-3 was not a “complete success” since Vikram and Pragyan did not wake up after the dawn of the second lunar day on September 22. They were not designed to wake up, he said, reiterating that the mission was a complete success. Speaking on ‘Roaming on the moon’ at TIFR on Thursday, he said the Chandrayaan-3 payloads have provided “excellent scientific data” and APXS has given “fantastic information” which are being analysed in detail.