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.
The word ‘chastened’, as used in the passage, means
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → made humbler and more careful by a past failure
Chastened means made humbler and more careful by a bad experience or a failure.
- The writer calls the engineers of Chandrayaan-3 “a chastened team”. Their lander had crashed in 2019.
- The next sentence shows the change. Instead of hoping that all would go right, “they asked what might go wrong and built for it”. The failure had made them more careful. Example: After losing the first match badly, a chastened team began to practise twice a day.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: punished by those in charge for a past failure — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This is the meaning of disciplined, an older sense of chasten. Nobody punishes the engineers in the passage. Example: The two boys were disciplined by the principal for bunking class.
Option 2: made bitter and resentful by a past failure — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This is the meaning of embittered. The team turns its failure into careful work, not anger. Example: Embittered by years of being ignored, the old clerk spoke to no one.
Option 3: made bolder and more daring by a past failure — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This is the meaning of emboldened. The team plans for what might go wrong, so it has become more careful, not more daring. Example: Emboldened by her first prize, Riya entered the state-level debate.