• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

India’s Moon Lander May Have Died During The Long Lunar Night

September 25, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Hopes are fading that the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover will reawaken after the long lunar night, as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) continues to attempt to establish contact.

In August, India became the fourth nation to touch down on the Moon, and the first to land near the lunar south pole. Since landing, the lander and rover have conducted experiments to measure the temperature at the landing site and analyze the composition of the lunar soil, stopping only briefly for a photoshoot.

Advertisement

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

During its initial planned 14-day mission, it detected sulfur, aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon, and oxygen. Sulfur is of particular interest to space-going nations, as it could potentially be used to make concrete. As well as this, the lander detected movement underneath the surface, including a possibly natural event.

Technically, it was “mission complete”. But ahead of the lunar night, which lasts 14 days, the rover was placed into sleep mode, with the hope that it could spring back into action with the sunrise a few weeks later. Unfortunately, the sun rose on the rover and lander on Friday, with no sign of activity so far.

“Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition,” ISRO said in an update. “As of now, no signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue.”

Advertisement

Surviving the night would be no small feat, with temperatures at the pole dropping to -200°C to -250°C (-328°F to -418°F), potentially damaging the instruments on board according to ISRO chief A.S. Kiran Kumar. With no contact as of Monday, he added that the “chances of reawakening are dimming with each passing hour.”

“Unless the transmitter on the lander comes on, we have no connectivity,” Kumar added, speaking to the BBC. “It has to tell us that it’s alive. Even if all other sub-systems work, we have no way of knowing that.”

Efforts will continue throughout the lunar day to establish contact. If it doesn’t wake up though, it has already achieved so much.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Chinese court rules against #MeToo plaintiff
  2. France says Mali must stick to election timetable
  3. Blinken meets Lopez Obrador to soothe thorny U.S.-Mexico relations
  4. What Would Happen To Humanity If All Microbes Suddenly Disappeared?

Source Link: India's Moon Lander May Have Died During The Long Lunar Night

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • In 1962, A Boy Found A Radioactive Capsule And Brought It Inside His House — With Tragic Results
  • This Cute Creature Has One Of The Largest Genomes Of Any Mammal, With 114 Chromosomes
  • Little Air And Dramatic Evolutionary Changes Await Future Humans On Mars
  • “Black Hole Stars” Might Solve Unexplained JWST Discovery
  • Pretty In Purple: Why Do Some Otters Have Purple Teeth And Bones? It’s All Down To Their Spiky Diets
  • The World’s Largest Carnivoran Is A 3,600-Kilogram Giant That Weighs More Than Your Car
  • Devastating “Rogue Waves” Finally Have An Explanation
  • Meet The “Masked Seducer”, A Unique Bat With A Never-Before-Seen Courtship Display
  • Alaska’s Salmon River Is Turning Orange – And It’s A Stark Warning
  • Meet The Heaviest Jelly In The Seas, Weighing Over Twice As Much As A Grand Piano
  • For The First Time, We’ve Found Evidence Climate Change Is Attracting Invasive Species To Canadian Arctic
  • What Are Microfiber Cloths, And How Do They Clean So Well?
  • Stowaway Rat That Hopped On A Flight From Miami Was A “Wake-Up Call” For Global Health
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version