He says the "harsh conditions" he faced led to "severe mental distress"
Americas3 days ago
- NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2019
Earlier, it was said the non-functioning of Vikram's throttleable engines in unison, resulted in its somersault and later crash-landing.
According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a national level committee comprising of its own experts and academicians is currently analysing the cause of the communication loss with Vikram.
The Indian space agency says that Vikram lost communication link with the ground stations and are silent on the lander's final fate.
According to an official, Vikram was at an altitude of 30 km from the lunar surface when it started its descent to soft-land on the lunar surface.
The official said that predicting orbits below 50 km is very tricky and usually they are estimated with an accuracy of plus/minus 1 km. If the lander's predicted height was at 30 km, the actual orbit height may remain anywhere between 29 to 31 km.
Similar will be the error in horizontal direction. Such errors occur as local gravity varies widely due to large variation of density of mountains and plains.
Over mountains, the lander's height reduces and over plains, the height increases.
"At that speed of crash, Vikram would have broken into pieces," the official added.
The non-inclusion of altimeter data in the navigation computer may be due to a software bug which was not detected by conducting proper pre-flight tests or it was missed out by mistake or oversight.
The chances of altimeter not functioning is also remote as any anomaly would have been noticed during the health checks that were done earlier, the official said.
On July 22, the Rs 978 crore Chandrayaan-2 was launched into the space by India's heavy lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mk III) in a text book style.
The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft comprised three segments -- the Orbiter (weighing 2,379 kg, eight payloads), Vikram (1,471 kg, four payloads) and Pragyan (27 kg, two payloads).
After five earth-bound orbit raising activities, Chandrayaan-2 was inserted into the lunar orbit. On September 2, Vikram separated from the orbiter.
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