As the country eagerly waits for the historic moment, space scientists affirmed that the recent failure of Russia's Luna-25 moon mission, which ended in a crash landing, is not expected to impact ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 lunar endeavor. The Luna-25 spacecraft collided on to the surface of the moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said on August 20.
K Sivan, who led ISRO during the launch of Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, on Monday, stated that the failure of Russia's lunar mission would not influence Chandrayaan-3's upcoming soft landing.
"It does not have any impact," he said, adding, "It (Chandrayaan-3 mission) is going on as per plan. It (soft landing) will be done accordingly."
"We are hoping that this time (unlike Chandrayaan-2) it (the touchdown) will be successful," he added.
Russia's Luna-25 had been racing against India's Chandrayaan 3, which is scheduled for a soft landing on the south polar region of the moon on Wednesday, August 23 at around 6.04 pm. No other country has managed to soft land their spacecraft on the south polar region of the moon, so far.
Former ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair dismissed talk in some quarters that India and Russia were engaged in a race to the Moon, and termed the crash-landing of Luna-25 as unfortunate.
”I know the (lander) module. It was ready way back in 2008. When I visited the lab (in Russia), they showed me the module. They didn’t have the resources to fly (then), so it had been kept in cold storage for a long time. Now only they had resources (to launch)," he told PTI.
Ruling out any impact on the Chandrayaan-3 mission launched on July 14, Nair said India’s venture is totally self-sufficient and "we are not dependent on them (Russia)". Right now, India’s space cooperation with Russia is limited to training of Indian astronauts for the Gaganyaan human space flight mission.
"So, had it (Luna-25) landed, our data and their (Russian) data (collected based on experiments on the lunar surface) would have been complementary," he said.
Earlier this month, ISRO Chairman S Somnath had said the Vikram lander would make a soft landing on the lunar surface even if everything fails. He had said even if everything fails, all the sensors, if nothing works, the Vikram landing will still make a landing.
He said the Vikram Lander has been designed in such a way that it should be able to handle many failuers, provided all the algorithms work properly. We have also ensured that if the two engines of the Vikram lander do not work properly this time, it will still be able to land, he said.
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