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 can be inferred from the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The lander of the 2019 mission had been given a smaller area in which to touch down.
The passage tells us what changed between the two attempts. From this we can work out what the earlier lander had.
- The writer says the new lander was given “a far larger patch of ground to settle on, rather than one small target to hit exactly”.
- This is listed as a change made after the crash of 2019. So the earlier lander must have had a smaller area to land in.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Vikram was meant to touch down inside one of the craters that never receive sunlight. — Incorrect. Wrong link: The dark craters are where the ice may be. The landing site was chosen to be flat and safe, and shadows are shown as a danger to landing.
Option 3: Vikram has confirmed that frozen water lies close to its landing site near the pole. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage only says scientists “believe ice may lie frozen” there. It says nothing about Vikram finding water.
Option 4: The engineers had found that weak legs were the cause of the crash in 2019. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: Sturdier legs were one of the things built for what “might go wrong”. The passage never gives the cause of the crash.