Chandrayaan 2 : Science & technology are experiment-based, success will be achieved eventually, says HBTU Prof

People across the city, especially academicians and students, remained awake till the wee hours of Saturday to watch the Chandrayaan-2 lander touch the lunar surface. However, lander Vikram lost communication with the ISRO control room when it was reportedly around 2 km from the Moon’s surface, and scientists said they would know more only after analysing the data.

Despite the setback, people here hailed the efforts of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the scientists associated with the mission.

Professor SU Siddiqi of the Harcourt Butler Technical University (HBTU) said, “We are proud of the efforts of the ISRO scientists. Technological snags can come at any stage despite one’s best efforts. The ISRO scientists have always worked hard. We are sure they will eventually find a way to overcome the snag that hit the communication system this time.”

At the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-K), students remained awake late into the night, watching live coverage of the landing on their mobile phones in the hostel rooms. A student of aerospace engineering at the institute said, “We were hopeful of the mission’s success. However, failure of communication shows that there is a need to deliberate over and make the communication systems foolproof for other ventures in future.”

At some educational institutions, such as the BNSD Shiksha Niketan, big television screens had been set up to enable students to watch the landmark event.

While initially, many viewers were disappointed with the lander getting lost, they unanimously said that the communication break would not hamper the indomitable sprit of Indian scientists and researchers.

Students like Saumya Agnihotri, Surya Kumar and Raghu Nandan Dev -- studying in different private engineering colleges -- said that as engineering undergraduates, they knew that a communication snag was a “very common technological phenomenon”. “This is how technology has been perfected over time -- by facing ups and downs,” said Saumya.

Professor Manoj Shukla of HBTU said, “Science and technology are based on experiments. Scientists remain optimistic for all their work but at times, they face unpredictable situations that are not in their control. What happened in the communication system of Chandrayaan-2 is a matter of deep study. But the scientists’ efforts were laudable and success will be achieved eventually.”

Meanwhile, Professor KS Venktesh of aerospace engineering and Professor Ashish Dutta of mechanical engineering at the IIT-K, who had been associated with Chandrayaan-2, could not be reached for their comments.