NASA Encourages ISRO After Vikram's Crash Landing, Says 'Keep Trying'

On September 7, India was eagerly waiting for ISRO’s ambitious Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft for its soft landing on the Moon. Unfortunately, communications with Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander to ISRO's ground station in Bengaluru were lost minutes before touchdown. This was a big setback for ISRO and as well as to the country. However, ISRO made several attempts to track the Vikram Lander but failed. Vikram lander of the ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 was finally found by a Chennai-based engineer named Shanmuga Subramanian. The 33-year-old guided NASA to the spot where the Vikram lander had crashed. Now, NASA has come forward to encourage ISRO for the future space programmes.

Tom Soderstrom, chief innovation and technology officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that India's scientific community must not be decouraged by the failure of Vikram lander. They should continue space programmes as this is the business. He further added that space missions are expected to fail.

Soderstrom told IANS that the successful landing of a rover is a very difficult thing. “So we get super nervous every single time. We never know if it’s going to work there, one little thing goes wrong and the whole thing is expected to fail,” he added.

“That’s the business because it’s a difficult business. I wouldn’t lose heart just because we lost one or two rovers. When we went to the Moon, it failed time and time again, but eventually, it worked. You learn,” the NASA official was quoted as saying by ET.

Soderstrom reiterated that it is important for the scientific community to share all that learning so that more people can participate in the endeavour to reach the next frontier in space.

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“I think science and technology is the true ambassador across the world. In the end, the Earth is ours and if we, one day, need to find a new Earth, it’s going to be the whole Earth that has to pull it together because it’s a big job,” he concluded.

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