"The last portion was not executed the right way, in that phase only we lost the link with the Lander, and could not establish communication subsequently. Right now the communication is lost. We will try to establish a link for the next 14 days," Sivan said in an interview to the Doordarshan, asserting that the mission is close to being a 100 per cent success. The ground station lost contact with the Lander minutes before its touchdown on the Moon's South Pole early on Saturday.
Sivan’s statement comes as ISRO claimed accomplishment of 90-95% of the objectives of India’s moon mission.
Since the Chandrayaan-2's Orbiter, which is already in the intended orbit around the Moon, has extra fuel in it right now, its life is estimated to be 7.5 years, said Sivan.
According to a statement issued by the agency earlier today, the Orbiter will send high-resolution images and enrich the understanding of Moon's evolution, mapping of minerals and water in its polar region.
Talking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to scientists, Sivan said that he is a source of inspiration and support.
"His speech gave us motivation. In his speech, the special phrase that I noted was, 'Science should not be looked for results, but for experiments and experiments will lead to results'," he said.
Chandrayaan-2 was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on July 22. After revolving around the earth's orbit, the spacecraft began its journey to the moon on August 14 and all manoeuvres were carried out to perfection until the last few minutes of descent.
"The Vikram Lander followed the planned descent trajectory from its orbit of 35 km to just below 2 km above the surface. All the systems and sensors of the Lander functioned excellently until this point and proved many new technologies such as variable thrust propulsion technology used in the Lander," ISRO said in a statement.
"The success criteria was defined for each and every phase of the mission and till date 90 to 95% of the mission objectives have been accomplished and will continue contribute to Lunar science , notwithstanding the loss of communication with the Lander,” it said.