In an exclusive interview to TOI,

Indian Space Research Organisation

(Isro) chairman K Sivan explained why he claimed a 98% success rate for the Chandrayaan-2 mission, what exactly PM

Narendra Modi

told him on the morning of September 7 and the space agency’s achievements from the country’s second moon mission. Excerpts from the interview:

Why did you say 98% success rate for Chandrayaan-2 even when Vikram lander had a ‘hardlanding’ on Moon?

What are the findings of the committee’s report?

Will you make the images taken by the orbiter public?

Will you be sharing any data received from the orbiter with Nasa or other space agencies?

What did PM Modi tell you when you informed him early September 7 that contact with the lander was lost?

What are the Isro achievements from the country’s 2nd moon mission?

What are Isro’s next priority missions or programmes?

Will you go for the Gaganyaan mission by 2022 if the unmanned mission before it is not successful?

Any programme where Isro is coordinating with Nasa or any other space agency?

‘98% success rate’ are not my words. That was the success rate given by the committee in its initial assessment. It arrived at the figure after considering all the milestones achieved during the mission: From the launch of Chandrayaan-2 till the final descent of the lander. The liftoff of launcher (GSLVMKIII) was successful and thereafter, the module’s earth-bound manouevres, trans-lunar injection, lunar-orbit insertion, lunar-orbit manoeuvres and lander-orbiter separation were all perfect. Even the final descent of Vikram till last leg was perfect. The committee arrived at the figure as most of the mission objectives were met.The committee that is looking into the reasons of the control room losing contact with Vikram on September 7 consists of members of academia and Isro experts. It will submit its report directly to the PMO in a few days as the PM is our department head. Depending upon his advice, we will decide the next course of action.Every data or image will be analysed. It will go through due process of reviewing. After review and approvals, data will be put in public domain .There may not be an issue with sharing that data but it has to be as per our policy.It was a tense moment, I don’t remember his exact wordings. But what I could remember and what he meant was, “You don’t worry, you take care. Everything will be all right”. Later that morning, after he addressed Isro scientists, he hugged me as I was emotional but then he didn’t say anything.The launcher for the first time established its lifting capability of 4 tonne-plus till GTO (geostationary transfer orbit). That was one big achievement. As a composite body, we were able to inject the module into Moon’s orbit. Two satellites (lander and orbiter) were successfully separated in the lunar orbit. This is also a first. We’re using very advanced payloads in the orbiter, several of them are firsts in the world. They are all functioning well at 100 km altitude. The orbiter will create ‘new science’ because of the specific nature of payloads. Vikram’s subsystems also demonstrated successfully. Except the last leg of landing, all systems performed well.We have lined up many satellite missions like Cartosat-3, RISAT-2BR1 and RISAT-2BR2 (advanced surveillance or spy satellites), GISAT-1 and GISAT-2 (new-series high-throughput communication satellites). Another big mission is Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) to be launched in December-end or early next year. We are targeting to launch Aditya L1 (Sun) mission by April next year. Another big mission is human spaceflight mission or Gaganyaan before 2022. After Gaganyaan, we will plan to set up our own space station. We will also launch the Venus orbiter mission by 2023-24. We have already made an announcement of opportunity. In response to it, we have got a large number of payload proposals from India as well as from abroad, and we’re screening them.Government wants us to launch the first human spaceflight mission before India’s 75th year of independence. Therefore, we are targeting to launch the manned mission by December 2021 . Before it, we will have two unmanned missions. One in December next year and the second one in July 2021. In the first mission, a humanoid (robot resembling a human) will be used. We will check for all parameters vital for the survival of humans in space. We will first perfect all our technologies in unmanned missions, then only we will send humans to space. Designing work of crew and service modules is over and realisation work has started. However, no decision has been taken on spacesuit, medical kit and any other equipment.We are currently working on NISAR (Nasa-Isro synthetic aperture radar mission). The earth observation satellite (which will be used for remote sensing , observe and understand natural processes on Earth) will be launched by early 2022. On reports of a joint lunar probe with Japan, nothing has been finalised yet.