15 minutes

to despair
The ISRO chairman’s fears of “15
minutes of terror” turned out to be
prophetic. This was the phase during
which moon lander Vikram’s journey
came to an abrupt end
ALTITUDE

30
km
Autonomous
Powered
descent
phase Begins

Vikram is at a height of 30 km and

travelling at 1,683 m/s when the
descent phase begins. It is about 648 km
away from its planned landing site

WHEN VIKRAM STARTs ITS DESCENT

Time from Vikram descent start

m/s m/s km
Horizontal vertical HEIGHT from
velocity velocity surface

~20
km

ROUGH
BRAKING

Vikram uses the brute force of four of

its five engines to brake its velocity
down to around 145m/s and bring its
height to 7.4 km. This phase goes on
for 10 minutes 20 seconds

MIDWAY THROUGH ROUGH BRAKING

Time from Vikram descent start

m/s m/s km
Horizontal vertical HEIGHT from
velocity velocity surface

7.65
km

ABSOLUTE
NAVIGATION
PHASE
In this phase, Vikram’s control system
corrects any errors in calculation of
key navigation parameters such as
height and velocity; but at the end of
rough braking, its horizontal velocity
is much higher than planned

END OF ROUGH BRAKING

Time from Vikram descent start

m/s m/s km
Horizontal vertical HEIGHT from
velocity velocity surface

TRANSITION TO
5
km
FINE BRAKING
PHASE

END OF NAVIGATION PHASE

Time from Vikram descent start

m/s m/s km
Horizontal vertical HEIGHT from
velocity velocity surface

Anomalies are noticed in the transition

from the absolute navigation phase
and the fine braking one. There is a
manoeuvre at this stage to rotate the
craft to allow its cameras to acquire the
moon terrain for navigational purposes.
Vikram inexplicably somersaults.
Vertical velocity, instead of decreasing,
increases by over 15-25 m/s. Another
explanation is that the spacecraft,
noticing a dip in velocity, overcorrected
it and spun out of control.

TERMINAL DESCENT
Even before Vikram could reach the
2.1
terminal descent height of 400 m, all
km
communications snap at 2.1 km above
the surface. Scientists do not know
what happened to it after that

LAST READING FROM VIKRAM

Time from Vikram descent start

m/s m/s km
Horizontal vertical HEIGHT from
velocity velocity surface

WHERE VIKRAM GOES OFF COURSE

8

6
Altitude (km)

0
35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 -5
Down Range (km)

Planned path Actual path Range