The recent setback encountered by Russia’s Luna-25 moon mission is predicted to have no repercussions on ISRO’s forthcoming lunar endeavor, Chandrayaan-3, as indicated by esteemed Indian space experts.
According to Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, the Luna-25 spacecraft experienced a crash landing on the Moon due to an unanticipated loss of control in its orbit on August 20.
When questioned about whether ISRO would face additional pressure following the Russian mission’s failure, K Sivan, the former head of ISRO during the launch of Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, stated to PTI on Monday that there would be no impact on Chandrayaan-3. He expressed, “It does not have any impact. It (Chandrayaan-3 mission) is going on as per plan. It (soft landing) will be done accordingly. We are hoping that this time (unlike Chandrayaan-2) it (the touchdown) will be successful.”
ISRO had previously announced that the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s lander module, housing a rover, is anticipated to make a controlled descent and touch down on the lunar surface around 6.04 pm on Wednesday, according to a statement released on Sunday.
G Madhavan Nair, former Chairman of ISRO, refuted the notion that India and Russia were in competition regarding lunar exploration. He regarded the crash-landing of Luna-25 as an unfortunate incident and disclosed that he had knowledge of the lander module from as far back as 2008. During a visit to a Russian laboratory, he was shown the module, which, due to lack of resources, had been kept in storage for a prolonged period. Only recently were the necessary resources available for its launch.
Nair clarified that the mishap involving Luna-25 would not impact the Chandrayaan-3 mission initiated on July 14. He emphasized that India’s lunar initiative is entirely self-reliant and that their cooperation with Russia is limited to training Indian astronauts for the Gaganyaan human space flight mission. He added, “Had it (Luna-25) landed, our data and their (Russian) data (collected based on experiments on the lunar surface) would have been complementary.”
