News blog

Indian moon mission loses contact

Posted on behalf of K.S. Jayaraman

India’s planned 2-year moon mission, launched last year, ended 14 months prematurely today. Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) have abruptly lost radio contact with the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1.

ISRO spokesman S. Satish said that attempts to re-establish contact had failed and that the spacecraft may crash any time on the lunar surface. The end of India’s first lunar mission comes four months after the onboard device for determining the orientation of the spacecraft started malfunctioning on 26 April.

An ISRO release said that the spacecraft had made more than 3,400 orbits around the moon, sent more than 70,000 images, and had met most of the scientific objectives of the mission.

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    kevin denny said:

    A 2 year mission ending 14 months early & still meeting most of its objectives? Sounds like wishful thinking to me or a desire to deflect criticism. Why a country with so much poverty is spending so much money on something that’s not essential is beyond me.

  2. Report this comment

    ARUN said:

    If anything had to done after becoming developed nation. It totally baseless in the argument. We are not competing with any other countries, but we try to prepare ourselves to frontier in next century in space. We are not competitive to anyone but we are competitive to technical and scientific advancement.

  3. Report this comment

    MattSimonato said:

    I am not a scientist but I know when things fail.

    This mission was a huge failure. It was planned to last 2 YEARS, and it lasted only 10 months. Not even a YEAR.

    I’m really sorry India, but you failed. Really.

  4. Report this comment

    Dr.Arvind Mishra said:

    Any knowledgeable person would know that such technical mishap is not any excepton but the rule of the game.

    So no worry ,we are ready to plan next one -why should such initiatives be the prerogative of developed nations only?

    Its not a Himalyan failure like challenger and Columbia crashes which even claimed precious human lives !

    Wake up west ! We are coming !

  5. Report this comment

    Vijay said:

    This is certainly not a failure for Chandrayaan-I mission. Many checkpoints have been reached in ten months. Throughout these weeks, so much of new investigation and findings have been made on the lunar surface especially on the lunar poles.

    This is really a good start to the Indian Space Research in the vast area of missions to the outer space. Hopefully Chandrayaan-2 will be a grand success, so be the Mars Mission.

  6. Report this comment

    John said:

    Yes, it was a great success for the country’s first planetary probe.

    The only problem, however, is the PR side of things during its findings, which were poorly handled, and kinda went the way of the Chinese’s moon mission, Change’1, in that we saw very little of the data presented.

    I know these data are ‘promised’ to be released within next year, however, they could have handled the publicity of other things like images, description of what they showed, what they found unusual…etc.,a bit better.

    John

  7. Report this comment

    Mon said:

    India brain power does not stop at this accident. Bravo to Indian scientists to have thought this far away. Huge budget spent on these scientific missions is not waste but a step to make India self reliant in the era of technological advancements.

  8. Report this comment

    C.B.Tashildar said:

    Development is not a birthright of few countries… and to fail does not mean the end… success and failture.. both are short lived.

  9. Report this comment

    james said:

    From a layman point of view, this mission indeed a successful one. This is one way of showing that Asia countries had the capability to do something what the west can do. This is not a matter of competition but sharing of knowledge for a common goal for the good of humanity. Keep up the good work India.

  10. Report this comment

    Jack said:

    Many say why space missions…while there are many people in poverty…!

    what had developed countries have done..in the past creating world wars 1 & 2 killing millions of people.. even now.! to make you(who say) people live like a robot now..!

  11. Report this comment

    forex said:

    I wish I could always go to space have attracted my attention

  12. Report this comment

    Janet said:

    This is actually a good way for advancing in terms of scientific aspects, however, I have to agree with Kevin Denny. the money should be spent to something that will benefit the country today. preparing for a scientific venture to other planets and moons are fine when the economy of the country is stable enough to spend on something like this.

  13. Report this comment

    Tas Targus said:

    If anything had to done after becoming developed nation. It totally baseless in the argument. We are not competing with any other countries, but we try to prepare ourselves to frontier in next century in space. We are not competitive to anyone but we are competitive to technical and scientific advancement.

Comments are closed.