Talking to media persons in Bhubaneswar on Saturday, Sivan had said: “We could not establish any communication with the lander (Vikram) yet. The project was developed in two parts – science and technology demonstration. We achieved total success in science objective while in technology demonstration, the success percentage was almost full. That’s why the project can be termed as 98 percent successful.”

On September 7, the 1,471 kg Vikram, while on its descent to soft land on the Moon’s south polar region, apparently lost control and crash-landed, snapping communication links.

Later the ISRO, in an official statement, said: “The success criteria was defined for each and every phase of the mission and till date 90 to 95 percent of the mission objectives have been accomplished and will continue contribute to lunar science, notwithstanding the loss of communication with the lander.”

The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft comprised three segments — the Orbiter (weighing 2,379 kg, eight payloads), ‘Vikram’ (1,471 kg, four payloads) and ‘Pragyan’ (27 kg, two payloads).