- India Achieves Historic Moon Landing
- Chandrayaan-3’s Successful Soft Landing
- Mission Objectives and Significance
India has achieved history as the first nation to land on the lunar south pole region with its Moon mission.
India joins the US, USSR, and China as the only nations to softly land on the Moon.
The Chandrayaan-3 Vikram spacecraft successfully landed as scheduled at 18:04 local time (12:34 GMT).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaimed, “India is now on the Moon” as nationwide celebrations erupted.
“We have achieved what no other nation could. “This is a happy occasion,” he added. Mr. Modi observed the event in real-time from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS summit.
Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), stated that the successful landing was “not our work alone, but the work of a generation of Isro scientists.”
Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft lost control and plummeted to the Moon just days before India’s accomplishment.
The South Pole is “very uneven” and “full of craters and boulders.” The mishap highlighted the difficulty of landing there.
India’s 2019 second lunar mission’s lander and rover, which attempted a gentle landing, were destroyed, while the orbiter survived.
On Wednesday, apprehensive moments preceded the landing as the lander, named Vikram after Isro founder Vikram Sarabhai, began its precarious descent while carrying the 26-kilogram rover Pragyaan (Sanskrit for “wisdom”) in its belly.
The lunar lander’s speed was progressively reduced from 1.68 kilometers per second to almost zero, allowing for a soft landing.
In a few hours – once the dust has settled, according to scientists – the six-wheeled rover will emerge from the lander’s belly and travel around the rocks and craters on the Moon’s surface, collecting data and images that will be transmitted to Earth.
What is India’s Moon mission’s next step?
The mission’s main goal is to find water-based ice, which scientists say might support human habitation on the Moon. It could also be utilized to provision Mars-bound and other distant spacecraft with propellant. According to scientists, the surface area that remains permanently in shadow is vast and may contain ice reserves.
The lander and rover are equipped with five scientific instruments that will aid in determining the physical characteristics of the Moon’s surface, the atmosphere near the surface, and the tectonic activity below the surface.
An official said the rover’s wheels are embossed with Isro’s logo and emblem to leave an imprint on lunar dirt.
Isro said Chandrayaan-3, India’s third lunar mission, will uncover “very substantial” scientific findings.
It comes 15 years after Chandrayaan-1, India’s first Moon mission launched in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the Moon’s parched surface and established that the Moon has a daylight atmosphere.
And despite failing the gentle landing, Chandrayaan-2 was not a total loss; its orbiter continues to orbit the Moon to this day, assisting the Vikram lander in transmitting images and data to Earth for analysis.
There is growing global interest in the Moon, and many more missions will soon reach the surface. According to scientists, there is still much to learn about the Moon, which is frequently referred to as a gateway to outer space.
