HT interview | Our systems are better tested, our craft is sturdier... We are ready: ISRO chief
The success of Chandrayaan-3 is crucial for future missions and collaborations with international agencies.
S Somanath is the man of the hour. He is also very busy. As he waits for the evening of August 23, when India’s third lunar spacecraft is scheduled to land on the surface of the moon after failing to do so four years ago, the chairperson of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ensuring that all safety checks of the lander are happening, receiving regular reports from the Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) — the main centre from where the craft is being tracked — and scrambling to find time for interviews, such as this one in which he assured HT that his team is confident of a successful descent on the lunar south pole region on Wednesday. Edited excerpts
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How are the preparations coming along for the landing on Wednesday?
We are extremely confident that it is going to be a successful mission. And I want to clarify that this confidence is coming from the work that our teams have put in to ensure the success of the mission over the last four years, after Chandrayaan-2 make a hard landing in 2019. So, this is not overconfidence.
Four years is not a short period [of time], and we have utilised every bit of it in bettering our mission, to map all contingencies and prepare backup plans. In fact, we have prepared backups of our backup plans as well.
So far, during the course of this mission, everything has gone as per our plan and there have been no contingencies. In fact, we also got some surprising results — we had initially planned for our propulsion module to be able to stay in orbit and perform its own experiments for around three to six months, but because we ended up with excess fuel, which was essentially because the spacecraft did not need to consume excess fuel and everything went as planned, the propulsion module can now stay in orbit for several years.
We have prepared for the landing by conducting multiple levels of verifications of the system and the health of the lander is perfectly fine.
Chandrayaan-2 had also successfully completed all these stages, but the mission failed in the final stage. Are you better prepared to avoid those mistakes now?
Chandrayaan-2 went well till the final phase, but we could not make a soft landing. We landed with a higher velocity. During Chandrayaan-2, one of our mistakes was that we kept the landing spot to a limited area of 500m x 500m, this did not leave much room for error. We had also accumulated some of the errors the craft was facing and did not resolve it as and when it was happening; this caused the lander module to spin out of control while it was descending. This time we are better prepared. We have learnt from our past mistakes and have rectified those mistakes and have also left room for any other error that could occur.
Overall, our systems are better tested, our craft is sturdier and can tolerate unfavourable conditions and our teams are also better prepared. We are ready.
What are the things that can go wrong during the landing?
We should not think like that. If it has to, everything can go wrong and if things have to go our way, nothing will go wrong. The question should be whether we are prepared to handle the situation if something goes wrong? And the answer to that is, yes.
How important is the success of Chandrayaan-3 for future missions of Isro?
The thing is that everyone wants to collaborate with agencies that can produce successful missions. Over the years we have established our place in the global space industry. We are known to successfully conduct exploratory missions at a much cheaper cost. We have some big-ticket missions after Chandryaan-3 and that also includes international collaborations.
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