'If Everything Fails...': Here's What ISRO Chief Said On Chandrayaan-3's Vikram Lander

ISRO chairman S Somanath has said that Vikram, the lander of India’s third moon mission Chandrayaan-3, will be able to make a soft-landing on the lunar surface on August 23 even if all the sensors and two of its engines do not work.

During a talk on 'Chandrayaan-3: Bharat's Pride Space Mission', hosted by the non-profit organisation Disha Bharat, Somanath said that the entire design of the lander 'Vikram' has been made in a manner that makes sure that it would be able to handle failures.

“If everything fails, if all the sensors fail, nothing works, still it (Vikram) will make a landing. That’s how it has been designed -- provided that the propulsion system works well,” news agency PTI quoted Somanath as saying.

“We have also made sure that if two of the engines (in Vikram) don’t work this time also, it will still be able to land,” the ISRO chairman said.

The biggest challenge before the ISRO team, according to S Somanath, is to make a horizontal ‘Vikram’ land vertically on the lunar surface.

Providing an update about Chandrayaan-3 on Monday, ISRO chairman said that India's third lunar mission is in good health and its most critical phase will be the orbit determination process when the spacecraft starts moving closer to the moon from the 100 km circular orbit.

Launched on July 14 by the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 rocket, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is now placed in a 170 km by 4,313 km elliptical orbit around the moon and a series of manoeuvres are planned for August 9 and 17 to place it in a 100 km circular orbit.

"Up to 100 km we do not see any difficulty. The issues are only in estimation of the position of the lander accurately from earth. This measurement is a very critical measurement, we call it the orbit determination process. If it is correct, the rest of the process can be done," Somanath told PTI in New Delhi.

"The Chandrayaan-2 experience will be of great help. We went through in great detail on what possibly went wrong. We re-constructed the scenario and made a lot of modifications to Chandrayaan-3," he said.