India became the first country to successfully land an unmanned spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, as part of its ambitious mission Chandrayaan-3.
Expectation and success
On the one hand, the Vikram lunar module touched the lunar surface on August 23, followed by the deployment of the Pragyaan rover, which will explore the terrain and conduct scientific experiments.
India has made history by becoming the first country to successfully land an unmanned spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, an unexplored and challenging region.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which means "lunar spacecraft" in Sanskrit, succeeded in putting its Vikram lunar module on the lunar surface on Aug. 23, shortly after 6 p.m. Indian local time.
Impressions and reactions
The president of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, announced the success of the operation with these words: "India is on the Moon"..
For its part, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who witnessed the moon landing from South Africa, where he is attending the Brics summit, called it a "victory cry of a new India"..
As a result, India thus joins the select club of countries that have achieved a soft landing on the Moon, along with the United States, the former Soviet Union and China.
However, none of them had reached the lunar south pole, an area believed to harbor deposits of water ice and other resources that could be useful for future space missions..
About Chandrayaan-3
The Chandrayaan-3 mission launched nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of enthusiastic spectators, taking much longer to reach the Moon than the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which did so in a matter of days.
In fact, India uses much less powerful rockets than those used by the United States at the time.
Instead, the probe orbited the Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long lunar trajectory.
Following the lunar landing of the Vikram module, which weighs about 1,500 kg and carries the Pragyaan rover, meaning "wisdom" in Sanskrit, a six-wheeled rover was deployed and will roam the lunar surface collecting images and data..
For its part, the rover is expected to remain functional for two weeks, performing a series of experiments such as a spectrometric analysis of the mineral composition of the lunar soil..
Precedents
This was India's second attempt to land a spacecraft on the Moon.
In 2019, the Chandrayaan-2 mission successfully deployed an orbiter, but its lunar module crashed.
Russia said last Monday that its first lunar mission in 47 years - which also targeted the south pole - had failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft lost control and crashed into the moon.
In this sense, the Chandrayaan-3 mission is the third chapter in India's lunar exploration program, which began 15 years ago with the first Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the arid lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during the daytime..
Finally, with this new milestone, India demonstrates its capability and ambition as a space power, while seeking to boost investment in the private sector in space launch and satellite-related businesses..
