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Comment by mehulagrawal | Hacker News Reader

If I understand correctly, this was the expected and most likely outcome. The planned lifespan of the lander and rover was only 14 days.

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Yes, probability of it surviving 14 days in Lunar Night at -200C was extremely low. India doesn't have Radioisotope batteries that work at this temp. It will also increase the payload size and will require larger launch infra. Not to mention all the material and chemical challenges faced at these temp.

That seems like an obvious opportunity for diplomatic and scientific outreach and partnership. Did India want this project to be entirely homegrown?

"Did India want this project to be entirely homegrown?"

I suspect so and I also think that if you are going to test your skills, then being realistic in the first place is good idea. The mission was always sold as unlikely to survive the night but that would be a nice to have if it did.

For me the mission seems to have worked rather well and performed exactly as billed.

Not entirely. There were plans for international cooperation for the missions (with Russia IIRC). However, it didn't go through. Anyway, future collaborations are planned - probably with Japan first.

Has any country exported an RTG to be shot into space by someone else?

Vertically-integrating it yourself is one thing, but I'd expect NASA exporting a chunk of plutonium to India, even if they're both are nuclear states, would be challenging.

the US supplies nuclear weapons to partner countries and keeps them in US custody and guard while on foreign soil. I suspect the same kind of agreement would be in place with an RTG until launched.

Yep, everyone knew that making it through the lunar night was pretty unlikely. A successful landing was always the main goal.

Russia attempted something similar with Luna-25. When they failed, their top rocket scientist suddenly died. The ISRO deserved more recognition for their success, IMO.

Agreed, it's an impressive accomplishment, especially on the very limited budget they had to work with.

Russia sent the first man to space as an underdog. A country with a population of 1.5 billion only now sent something to the moon.

You cannot compare these.

Coincidentally, Russia also sent the first dog into space, as an Untermensch, if you will.

Did they say it beforehand? That's the only way one gets credit. Saying afterward, 'we planned it that way', is too easy.

The Mission Life was stated as one lunar daylight period (14 earth days) well before the launch. You can see this in the Wikipedia article [1] and in the citation for it. So yes, it was stated beforehand.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3

Wikipedia definitely doesn't count! :D But I'll trust you on the citation.

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