Big day for Chandrayaan-3, will Vikram Lander and Pragyan Rover wake up today?

Indian Moon Mission: The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will try to wake up the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover, which were placed in sleep mode earlier this month, to continue their scientific experiments. The space agency said it will try to re-establish communication with the two instruments on September 22 after a lunar night lasting more than two weeks.

Meanwhile, amateur astronomer Scott Tilley has claimed that the Vikram lander is receiving continuous messages from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Kauro space station, but the response from the lander is very weak.

Scott wrote in one of his tweets that bad news, 2268 MHz is being emitted on the channel of Chandrayaan-3. This is a weak band. That means no strong signal has been received from the Chandrayaan-3 lander yet. Scott has made several tweets. Which has been coming every ten minutes for the last four hours.

Big challenge for Pragyan and Vikram
The big challenge for ‘Pragyan and Vikram’ will be to reactivate after surviving in -200 degree Celsius temperature. If the onboard instruments survive the low temperatures on the Moon, the modules can be revived and continue their mission of sending information from the Moon for the next fourteen days. If things go according to plan, the rover will start moving after the commands are fed into the rover. Later the same process will be repeated on the lander module.

Vikram, Pragya rover’s sleep mode
The Chandrayaan-3 lander was put into sleep mode at around 8 am on September 4, a few days after Chandrayaan-3’s successful landing on the lunar surface. Its payloads were disabled, however, its receivers remained operational. Earlier in-situ experiments at the new location were carried out by CHASTE, Rambha-LP and ILSA payloads, ISRO said. The collected data was sent back to Earth.

Earlier, the agency had activated the Pragyan rover’s sleep mode on September 2. It was said that the battery was fully charged, the receiver was switched on and the solar panel was optimized to receive light at the next sunrise, which occurred on September 22.

ISRO said on September 4, ‘Vikram will sleep next to Pragyan when the solar power runs out and the battery dies. He is expected to wake up around September 22, 2023.

Let us tell you that India created history after the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3’s ‘Vikram’ lander on the lunar surface on August 23. India became the fourth country to reach the surface of the Moon and the first to reach the South Pole.