Chandrayaan-1 denials!

While Chandrayaan-1 has been in trouble since April, & the thing has been on & off news since last month, yesterday morning it finally went out of radio contact. ISRO is still hoping to regain contact, but no one is sure if it will be possible.

Initially, the on board device used to orient it using star charts burned out - so it could no longer automatically orient itself correctly relative moon. That was in April. So its orbit was doubled - means mapping resolution halved - & it was manually kept oriented from earth station near Bangalore. Apparently, higher orbit was either less fuel consuming or made manual control from earth easier. In either case, this event cut the life of craft to half, & about now it was supposed to have plunged to moon - or so I understood news reports over the last month.

Today's news reports also talk of other on board instruments burned out or recently shut off for fear of burn out.

The thing that I find upsetting is not that the craft has been having troubles. That's expected in a project of this kind. What I find really upsetting is continued official statements that the project is a complete success, that 95% mission is complete, that it is not a loss worthy of note, ...

I mean, recognize that the taxpayer funding the project has a bit of intelligence! A project that is primarily a mapping project goes half resolution when it's a third of its life through & dead half way through, & we are talking of complete success! Does someone intend not to learn what we need to out of the disaster? I can understand the need to reassure public & parliamentarians so funds of other moon & Mars projects won't be affected, but denying the issues isn't going to get us anywhere.

Related: All Chandrayaan posts.