ISRO will take the Indian tricolour to the moon some day

It’s a slight setback, not the end of a dream. The moon mission will be completed one day and the Indian flag will fly on the lunar surface. It didn’t happen in the wee hours of Saturday, September 7. Across the country people waited, watching their television screens, hoping for the announcement from Indian Space Research Organisation that the lander named Vikram had made a soft landing on the moon. That announcement didn’t come. Moments before the lander was due to touch down it lost contact with ground control. The lander was just 2.1 km from the lunar surface,when this happened. But all is not lost. The orbiter is still in place and has a life of one year. It can and will take pictures of the moon and even of the lander on the lunar surface and send to ISRO for analysis and further research.

So the lander did not make the soft landing, yet, what has been accomplished is no small acheivement. Indian Space Research Organisation has to be complimented on where it has taken the country in space research. Chandrayaan 2 is not a failure. The lander was succesfully launched from the orbiter and began its descent, but those ‘15 terrifying minutes’ were not termed so for flimsy reasons. For those of us who watched from home, they were tense moments, imagine what it was at the ISRO headquarters. There was not a smile on the faces of the scientists when the link broke. The applause of minutes before had stopped and the silence was defeaning. The looks on the faces of the scientists revealed that something had gone wrong. But people still waited, hoping for a miracle that didn’t come.

India has stood by ISRO and its scientists. The social media is awash with compliments for the organisation. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was watching the landing live from the viewing gallery at ISRO, the country has backed the scientists who took the nation so close to having its flag on the lunar surface. It is indeed, as said by Modi, a proud moment for the country and the contribution from the scientists is exceptional. India may not have made history as it hoped to do in the early hours of September 7, but it united the country in a manner that only sports has done in the past. 

This is a victory for science. Yes, this is science, this is an experiment. There are successes and there are lessons to be learnt from experiments that don’t give the expected result. This is an example of the latter, and India has to persevere to reach that dream. As NASA has said, in the past six decades 60 per cent of the lunar missions have been successful. This one is among those that didn’t quite make it, but still made it to a stage where many other countries have not even attempted to reach. Only three countries – United States of America, Russia and China – have made soft landings on the moon. India would have been the fourth, and the first to land on the south side of the moon, had Vikram not faltered.

The mission doesn’t end here. There is a lot of work still to be done by ISRO. The orbiter will be sending its pictures and there will be enough data for the scientists at ISRO to analyse. The next lunar mission will not be for a while and its success is not in doubt. India is the only Asian country to have a space probe orbiting Mars. It has proved that it is far ahead in space research and has still much to accomplish. ISRO will take the Indian tricolour to the moon some day and that may happen even sooner than expected.