ISRO will touch a major milestone when the Moon Lander will de-dock from the Chandrayaan-3 orbiter spacecraft and touchdown on Moon’s surface in the next few days.

In sharp contrast we have the year-end Review projecting the initiatives of Department of Space during the year 2019. This Review has been silent and there is not a word about Lander Vikram while it lists the “successful launch” of GSLV-MK III M1, India’s most powerful launch vehicle, accomplished in July 2019.

The Review states the following: 

This launch vehicle is capable of launching 04 ton of satellites into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit(GTO). The mission carried Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter spacecraft to its intended orbit.The instruments are continuously providing very useful science data.

What should be noted is that not a word has been mentioned in the ISRO review about the Moon lander that never landed. The review only States “the mission carried Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter spacecraft to its intended orbit”.  

Till now ISRO has neither shared with the citizens the video or pictures of Lander Vikram, the moon lander, de-docking from the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter spacecraft nor the photos taken by Lander Vikram position detection camera. It’s descent towards Moon was shown only through a digitally generated image/video projected on a large screen mounted at the ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru. ISRO Chairman Dr K Sivan had announced from the Control Centre at the ISRO headquarters in Bangalore during the early hours at 2.18 am, Saturday 7 September 2019, that they have lost signals from Chandrayaan- 2 Lander Vikram when it was at an altitude of 2.1 km. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present to witness the Moon landing of Chandrayan-2 Lander at the ISRO HQ during the midnight hours.

Check: When Chandrayaan-2 Lander stopped sending signals to ISRO Control Centre

Chandrayaan-2: What happened to Lander Vikram; ISRO has a lot to explain

ISRO is silent about Lander Vikram; Chandrayaan-3 and Gaganyaan are the new focus