At the time of putting the lander and rover to sleep, the ISRO had said that if the two don't wake up, they will “forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador”.
''Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments! Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador,” wrote the space agency.
On September 22, when the lunar sunrise was expected, the ISRO shared it tried to establish contact with the rover and lander, but in vain.
“Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition.
As of now, no signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue,” the ISRO said in a post on X.
Experts are hoping that the rover and lander might wake up with the crack of dawn citing examples of China's lunar lander Chang'e-4 and rover Yutu-2 that had started operating again after surviving their first lunar night in 2019.
However, former ISRO Chairman AS Kiran Kumar told BBC that it is not necessary that the Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover wake up as temperature plummets to as low as -200 to -250 degree Celsius during night on the Moon and batteries are not designed to be stored or operate at such extreme temperatures.
Former ISRO scientist Tapan Mishra told the news agency ANI that the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover were originally designed to operate for only 14 days.