Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
There is an odd logic in returning to the hard place where you once failed. In September 2019, the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2 lost contact during its final descent and crashed. Four years later, ISRO sent a new lander of the same name to the same difficult region, near the lunar south pole.
The reason is water. Near the poles the Sun stays low in the sky, and the floors of some deep craters never see sunlight. Scientists believe ice may lie frozen in that permanent dark. It could one day give future crews drinking water, oxygen and even rocket fuel.
The same low Sun that guards the ice makes landing treacherous. Shadows stretch far across the ground and hide boulders and crater edges from a descending craft’s cameras. So the mission did not aim for the pole itself. Vikram was sent to a site some distance from it, close enough to be new ground for science, flat enough to give the lander a fair chance.
What changed between the two attempts was less the destination than the mindset. The engineers behind Chandrayaan-3 were a chastened team. Instead of designing for everything going right, they asked what might go wrong and built for it. The lander got sturdier legs that could survive a harder touchdown. It was also given a far larger patch of ground to settle on, rather than one small target to hit exactly. This is a less glamorous kind of courage, and I think the more useful one.
On 23 August 2023, Vikram came down gently near the south pole. Soon after, the Pragyan rover rolled down a ramp onto the grey soil. Many people watching saw boldness. The engineers, one suspects, felt mostly relief that the dull work of planning for failure had paid off.
Which of the following best expresses the central idea of the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → A return to a hard but valuable region of the Moon succeeded because the mission was planned around what could go wrong.
The passage explains why India went back to a hard region of the Moon and how it succeeded the second time.
- The region near the south pole is valuable because ice may lie in its dark craters. It is also hard, because long shadows hide boulders and crater edges.
- After the crash of 2019, the engineers “asked what might go wrong and built for it”. They gave the lander sturdier legs and a larger area to land in.
- The writer ends by saying that this “planning for failure” is what paid off.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Ice hidden in shadowed craters makes the Moon’s south pole the most valuable site for future human bases. — Incorrect. Too narrow: The ice is only the reason for going there. The passage is mainly about how the landing was planned and achieved.
Option 2: Chandrayaan-3 succeeded because its engineers were bolder than before and aimed straight at the pole itself. — Incorrect. Contradicted: The mission “did not aim for the pole itself”. The writer praises careful planning, not boldness.
Option 3: The low Sun near the south pole makes it the hardest region of the Moon, which is why few missions go there. — Incorrect. Wrong focus: The low Sun is one difficulty described in the third paragraph. The passage never says how many missions go there.