'Pretty difficult' situation: ISRO chief

"At the moment, we have suspended the mission. Calling it off would depend on what has failed. We are trying to analyse what has gone wrong and we will take a look at it tomorrow," he said.  Asked if there was any hope of the mission surviving, he said he can't confirm anything at the moment.

Nair said the Chandrayaan-I team was analaysing what has gone wrong and whether there is any possibility of recovery. Asked to comment on the success of the mission, he said he will rate all the technological objectives, launching and going to the moon were precisely achieved and "I will give 100 per cent marks for that."

"As far as the scientific objectives are concerned, 95 per cent of the objectives have been completed. So, we are not unhappy but at the same time if you gave more life we would collect more data and that could have given us the opportunity to recheck what we have collected," he said.

Asked whether the mission was over, he said "we will have to face the reality but we will have better opportunity tomorrow." Nair said even at the fag end the mission, ISRO and NASA performed a unique joint experiment that the Indian space agency said could yield additional information on the possibility of existence of ice in a permanently shadowed crater near the North pole of the moon.