BENGALURU (Reuters) - India lost contact with a spacecraft that was trying to land on the moon on Saturday, said the president of the...

India loses contact with Chandrayaan-2 when the lunar mission fails

BENGALURU (Reuters) - India lost contact with a spacecraft that was trying to land on the moon on Saturday, said the president of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), defeating the nation's ambitious plans to become the first country to investigate the unexplored lunar south pole.

The landing module of the Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission in India was attempting a "soft" or controlled landing near the south pole of the moon, where scientists think there might be ice water. ISRO lost contact with him as he landed on the moon.

"The data is being analyzed," said ISRO President K Sivan, in a room full of scientists in distress at the agency's monitoring center in Bangalore.

The Indian-built spacecraft, which gravitated around the moon, began descending towards the lunar surface around 2007 GMT, but scientists lost contact with the latter during the penultimate stage of descent.

"The descent of the Vikram landing module went as planned and normal performance was observed up to an altitude of 2.1 km. Subsequently, Lander's communication to the ground stations was lost, "said an ISRO official. The landing module was named Vikram by the father of the Indian space program, Vikram Sarabhai.

A live broadcast from ISRO, India's equivalent to NASA, showed scientists were tense and the ground was silent as the control station tried to get a signal from the NAS module. 'landing.

"There are ups and downs in life ... What you have accomplished is no small feat," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, present at the ISRO center, to scientists after being informed by Sivan.

Although ISRO has not published any official updates, Modi, in an official speech by the scientists and the nation, suggested that the landing module could have traveled at a higher speed than expected and landed on the moon.

"If one day historians write about today's incident, they will certainly say that, inspired by our romantic description of the moon throughout life, Chandrayaan, in the final leg of his journey, s 'is eager to kiss the moon,' he said.

Modi said that although India "is very close", it must "cover more ground" in the coming times. "I can say with pride that the effort was worth it, as well as the trip."

In a moment of emotion broadcast on television, Modi hugged and comforted a visibly torn Sivan.

"We are sure that the best is yet to come in terms of our space program," said Modi.

Sivan had previously described the final moments of the landing mission as "15 minutes of terror," because of the complexities of lunar gravity, terrain, and dust.

So far, only the United States, Russia and China have successfully landed on the moon, but India has failed to land in the lunar region of the South Pole.

Shortly after the failure of ISRO's lunar mission, people shared the reactions found on Twitter:

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