Representational photo.

NEW DELHI: Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is running against time to resume a communication link with Chandrayaan-2 ’s Vikram lander, which had a “hard-landing” on Moon on September 7, as the window for its slim revival is fast lapsing.

Isro had chosen the time of Vikram’s moon landing on September 7 as it wanted that rover Pragyan , housed within the lander, could fully use 14 Earth days for experiments in the south pole region of Moon like taking lunar images and performing soil analysis for two weeks. As the first lunar Earth day started on September 7, the hope of getting it revived is there till September 20-21, the day till when Vikram will remain exposed to sun rays.

After Sept 20-21, 14 Earth nights will start (one lunar day is equal to 14 Earth days and 14 Earth nights) when the temperatures in the south pole would reach freezing -238 degrees Celsius in the permanently shadowed regions of the pole. In those extreme freezing temperatures, it is most likely that electronic components of Vikram and rover would get damaged. In fact that was the reason that Isro had kept the lifespan of Vikram and rover as 14 days. Isro is, therefore, trying its best to use the orbiter, circling at 100km lunar altitude, to develop the contact with “motionless” Vikram.

Meanwhile, Nobel laureate Serge Haroche, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2012, during an event near Chandigarh on Wednesday said that “failures occur in science”. However, he hoped that “Isro scientists would certainly try to fix the problem”.

“Science is something where you are going in the unknown...you have surprises, sometime good surprises and sometime you have bad surprises and failures,” Haroche explained.

