Bangalore: ISRO chief Madhavan Nair on Saturday
virtually admitted that the Chandrayaan-I moon mission could
be over, saying it is a "pretty difficult" situation.
"At the moment, we have suspended the mission. Calling
it off would depend on what has failed. We are trying to
analyse what has gone wrong and we will take a look at it
tomorrow," he told reporters here.
Asked if there was any hope of the mission surviving,
he said he can't confirm anything at the moment.
Nair said the Chandrayaan-I team was analaysing what
has gone wrong and whether there is any possibility of
recovery.
Asked to comment on the success of the mission, he
said he will rate all the technological objectives, launching
and going to the moon were precisely achieved and "I will give
100 per cent marks for that."
"As far as the scientific objectives are concerned, 95
per cent of the objectives have been completed. So, we are not
unhappy but at the same time if you gave more life we would
collected more data and that could have given us the
opportunity to recheck what we have collected," he said.
Asked whether the mission was over, he said "we will
have to face the reality but we will have better opportunity
tomorrow."
Nair said even at the fag end the mission, ISRO and
NASA performed a unique joint experiment that the Indian space
agency said could yield additional information on the
possibility of existence of ice in a permanently shadowed
crater near the North pole of the moon.
Bureau Report
First Published: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 22:45