India's latest Moon-shot fails

[Bubbajim]

What just happened? India’s Isro space agency launched Chandrayaan-2 in July, their second vehicle destined to land on the Moon. The journey went without a hitch until the last moment, when Isro dramatically lost contact with the probe during its descent to the lunar surface.

India was all set to become the fourth nation to make a successful soft-landing on the Moon. Their latest probe, Chandrayaan-2 (‘Moon vehicle 2’), had journeyed for thousands of miles and safely made it to our natural satellite. The descent began and all was going according to plan until an unknown error meant India’s space agency Isro lost contact with the probe a mere 1.3 miles above the lunar surface.

The landing phase is always the most tricky part of an already incredibly difficult operation. So much so that it is often dubbed the "15 minutes of terror." In this case the terror turned to disappointment, as contact was lost seconds before landing was meant to take place.

Chairman of Isro, Kailasavadivoo Sivan, announced that the descent had been normal until communication was lost, and that the “mission’s data would be analysed” to ascertain what exactly went wrong. The fate of the craft is unknown, but it’s likely to be in bits, strewn across the Moon’s surface.

India is proud of our scientists! They’ve given their best and have always made India proud. These are moments to be courageous, and courageous we will be!

Chairman @isro gave updates on Chandrayaan-2. We remain hopeful and will continue working hard on our space programme.

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 6, 2019

Chandrayaan-2, which launched in July, comprised a landing module and a rover. The lander, named Vikram after Isro’s founder, would have deployed the rover, nicknamed Pragyan, which means ‘wisdom’ in Sanskrit. Pragyan was host to numerous sensors and instruments designed to search for water, check the composition of lunar minerals, and measure ‘moonquakes’.

This has been Isro’s most advanced and challenging project to date. Even more impressively, it was done on a relatively tiny budget of $150 million. While the mission was ultimately unsuccessful, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that he is proud that Isro came so close to achieving their historic goal.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/81799-india-latest-moon-shot-fails.html

 

[Uncle Al]

In the endearing words of Ha-boo ..... "please come again" .......

 

[neeyik]

Not including this one, two out of the last 10 missions to the Moon failed; historically, the number of failures across 136 missions has been 59 (I.e. 44% failure rate). They've done really well to get that close to a successful landing.

 

[VitalyT]

They should have outsourced it to USA.

Also, India is notorious for stowaway problems. Probably got a few in this one too.

 

[abhitanshu]

Communication to vikram lander lost after 2.1 km from moon. mission was not successfully failed as most of the gadgets were installed in orbiter and rover has only 14 days of planned life. orbiter will provide data up-to 7.5 year and it is working fine. only 5% mission has been failed rest 95% is success even though it was first attempt and that too at minimal cost. we proud of our isro.

jai hind

 

[p51d007]

Boy, we've trashed our planet, now lets trash others LOL.
Surprised the "Earth first" types aren't complaining about this.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I tried to watch the live feed on YT, I really did. It was the single most awful video feed I've ever seen, I made it about 90 seconds before closing the window. Maybe the central 40% was the actual mission feed itself and rest of the frame was taken up by horrible clashing color fields covered with block text, flashing text, looping animated logos, and jingoistic slogans. It's a different day and age now but there was zero feel of excitement of achieving a first, rather it was like a Paul Verhoven film missing all of the satire and style.

This is what I though of first:

but amazingly this is less visually offensive.

 

[axiomatic13]

I watched the whole thing. It was compelling. India should be proud of themselves. No one has gotten space travel right the first time.

 

[Dimitrios]

I tried to watch the live feed on YT, I really did. It was the single most awful video feed I've ever seen, I made it about 90 seconds before closing the window. Maybe the central 40% was the actual mission feed itself and rest of the frame was taken up by horrible clashing color fields covered with block text, flashing text, looping animated logos, and jingoistic slogans. It's a different day and age now but there was zero feel of excitement of achieving a first, rather it was like a Paul Verhoven film missing all of the satire and style.

This is what I though of first:

but amazingly this is less visually offensive.

Sounds like a pop up ad from the late 1990's early 2000's that claims you won a prize lol. Did you win anything?

Anyway funny comment, you win best comment for the weekend.

 

[bhattaraib58]

There is always next time.

 

[Ram Verma]

Indians crying over losing contact with a machine but not over 7 million Kashmiris who are unable to contact each other since a month.

 

[captaincranky]

I tried to watch the live feed on YT, I really did. It was the single most awful video feed I've ever seen, I made it about 90 seconds before closing the window. Maybe the central 40% was the actual mission feed itself and rest of the frame was taken up by horrible clashing color fields covered with block text, flashing text, looping animated logos, and jingoistic slogans. It's a different day and age now but there was zero feel of excitement of achieving a first, rather it was like a Paul Verhoven film missing all of the satire and style....[ ]....

There was most likely malware, scamware, or ransomware in the feed. This is, after all, India we're talking about. How else did you think they were going to pay for the mission?

The age old adage about ending a flight successfully is, "any landing you can walk away from is a good one". I hate to say this, (no I don't), but maybe they should have sent one of their "untouchables" along, to see how the touchdown went.

 

[Capaill]

I tried to watch the live feed on YT, I really did. It was the single most awful video feed I've ever seen, I made it about 90 seconds before closing the window. Maybe the central 40% was the actual mission feed itself and rest of the frame was taken up by horrible clashing color fields covered with block text, flashing text, looping animated logos, and jingoistic slogans. It's a different day and age now but there was zero feel of excitement of achieving a first, rather it was like a Paul Verhoven film missing all of the satire and style....[ ]....

There was most likely malware, scamware, or ransomware in the feed. This is, after all, India we're talking about. How else did you think they were going to pay for the mission?

The age old adage about ending a flight successfully is, "any landing you can walk away from is a good one". I hate to say this, (no I don't), but maybe they should have sent one of their "untouchables" along, to see how the touchdown went.

Someone should ring up a random person in India and say "Hi, I'm calling from Microsoft. We have detected suspicious activity in your lunar lander and it may have a virus. If you would like us to log in and clean it, please send your credit card details to ...."

 

[Black Paper]

I hope India is proud of such a historic attempt.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the bigotry I've witnessed in this comment section.