'It's OK if Pragyan doesn't wake up. It's done what it had to', says ISRO chief

As prospects for future communication with India’s Moon rover fade, the country’s space commander said he was content with the prospect of declaring the country’s successful lunar mission a success.

In August, India began exploring the Moon’s surface after becoming only the fourth country to land a spaceship on the celestial body, igniting jubilation in a country that is swiftly approaching benchmarks established by global space powers.

Rover Pragyan, which means “Wisdom” in Sanskrit, scanned the Moon’s south pole but was turned off before the onset of lunar darkness, which lasts around two weeks on Earth.

The Indian Space Research Agency had hoped to prolong the mission by reactivating the solar-powered vehicle once daylight returned to the lunar surface, but so far has been greeted by radio silence.

“It is OK if it does not wake up because the rover has done what it was expected to do,” ISRO chief S. Somanath told reporters late Wednesday, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

ISRO said last week it had hoped to reestablish contact with the rover and the lander that safely delivered it.

“As of now, no signals have been received from them,” it added.

The world’s most populous nation has been steadily matching the achievements of established spacefaring powers at a fraction of their cost.

It has a comparatively low-budget space programme, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since first sending a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.

Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages.

India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars in 2014 and is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into the Earth’s orbit by next year.

Earlier this month it launched a four-month mission towards the centre of the solar system to study phenomena on the surface of the Sun.

August’s successful lunar mission came four years after its predecessor crashed on final descent, in what was seen at the time as a huge setback for its space programme.