The head of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has thanked ISRO for "inspiring generations," despite the agency's apparent failure to send a space laboratory to the moon.
"Space exploration brings out the best in all of us," said NASA President Jim Pridenstein. "Even when the mission is not as planned, our efforts inspire those who come after us to continue to reach the stars."
India's attempt to land an unmanned space laboratory on the moon ended in failure yesterday, but the Indian Space Research Organization said that most of the mission's objectives had been achieved, and that efforts would continue to contact its lunar space laboratory.
The connection between Vikram and the ISRO earth station in the southern Indian city of Bangalore was cut off minutes before the lunar laboratory was scheduled to land in a previously unexplored area of ​​the moon.
The head of the Indian Space Research Organization K.K. Sevan told an Indian government channel that efforts to contact the laboratory would last for 14 days.
Hours after an attempt to land the space lab near the undiscovered Antarctic moon on the moon ended in failure, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged scientists to hold onto optimism.
"You have come closer," Moody said in a televised address to the Indian nation.
The connection between the Vikram lunar laboratory and the earth station in Bangalore was interrupted minutes before it was due to land on a previously unexplored area of ​​the moon in the early hours of yesterday, in what would have been a victory for the Indian space program.
The attempt came about seven weeks after the launch of the Chandrayaan 2 mission from a base in southern India on July 22.