Will keep trying connecting Vikram lander for 14 days: ISRO Chief

New Delhi : Ensuring that there are still hopes alive to establish a connection with Vikram lander, ISRO chief K Sivan told the national broadcaster that his team will continue to find a connection with the lander for next 14 days.

"We will be trying to establish a link, we will try for the next 14 days," said Sivan when asked if there was any chance of reconnecting.

On Saturday morning ISRO missed soft landing of Vikram lander on moon by just 2.1 kms.

“Powered descent included four stages, the first three phases were executed nicely but the last one was not executed in a nice way and we lost the link with the lander,” said Sivan in his first TV interview after the mission.

Showing how strong is ISRO's ideology, K Sivan said that one failure is not going to affect any of our future programme, including the first manned mission, Gaganyaan, planned for the end of 2022.

“Whatever happened today is not going to affect any of the Isro’s activity. We are extremely busy with Gaganyaan project, which is due by the end of 2020,” Sivan told Doordarshan.

Talking about Chandrayaan 2 he claimed that 90-95% of the mission is successful and we were very close to making it a 100% success.

“Regarding the technology demonstration part, we could descend up to two kilometers… 90-95 per cent of technology aspect was also achieved,” he said adding, “Chandrayaan mission was very close to 100 per cent success”.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugged and consoled a teary eyed Sivan outside the mission operations complex after his address to the scientists and the nation. The PM too appeared emotional.

“We are proud of our space program. Today our resolve to touch the moon has grown even stronger. We came very close but we need to cover more ground in the time to come. We are full of confidence that when it comes to our space mission programme the best one is yet to come. There are several places to discover and go,” said the Prime Minister.