Vikram: Chandrayaan-3: Isro yet to hear from Vikram & Pragyan, but there’s still time

BENGALURU: Isro, which had kept “some circuits” alive for its ground stations to hear from the Moon in the event of Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover — Vikram and Pragyan — awake again, is yet to hear anything as of Friday evening.
“Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition.As of now, no signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue,” Isro said late Friday.

More than a fortnight ago, when it uplinked the commands to put Vikram and Pragyan in sleep mode, the space agency said it hoped for their waking up on September 22.
Isro chairman S Somanath had told TOI when Vikram and Pragyan went to sleep: “The lander and rover should awake automatically, we’ve kept some circuits alive for this. But we have to wait and see.”

A senior scientist associated with the mission told TOI: “We’ve heard nothing so far”. However, the scientist added, that there was still a lot of time and the team had had its fingers crossed.
Isro Space Application Centre (SAC) director Nilesh M Desai told TOI on Friday that the waking up could happen later tonight (Friday) or even tomorrow (Saturday), and that the wait was on.

While Sunrise on Moon happened early Wednesday, systems on Vikram and Pragyaan need certain conditions for the wake up. M Sankaran, director, UR Rao Satellite Centre, the Chandrayaan-3 lead centre, had explained to TOI earlier: “…For the wake up, we need power generation and temperature on the elements on Vikram and Pragyan to meet certain criteria. We should know something by September 21 or 22. If they wake up, it’ll wake up during this time.”
This is aside from getting the right Sun elevation angle of 6° to 9°. Whether the two get a second life on Moon or not, the Chandrayaan-3 mission is successful with all mission objectives having been met during its mission life.
The stated objectives of the mission was: demonstrating safe and soft landing, rover roving and conducting in-situ scientific experiments.