After a 40-day journey starting from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 made a soft landing on the Moon at 6:03 pm IST on August 23. south pole of the moon. With the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3, India is now the fourth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the Soviet Union (now Russia), the United States and China. Celebrations broke out across the country after the Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully landed on the moon.
Soon after landing, Chandrayaan-3 sent its first message: “India, I have reached my destination and so have you!” Shortly after ISRO chief S. Somnath announced: “We have achieved a soft landing on the Moon. India is on the Moon.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who witnessed the historic moment virtually from Johannesburg, congratulated the ISRO scientists saying, “This is a historic moment and sounds the clarion call for a developed India.” The ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru echoed the slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' (Long live mother India) and 'Vande Matram' (I salute you mother). Celebrations broke out across India, with people bursting crackers, handing out sweets and dancing in joy.
'Chandrayaan' is a Hindi/Sanskrit word meaning lunar vehicle; 'Chandra' means moon and 'Yaan' means vehicle. Chandrayaan-3 is the third and latest Indian lunar exploration mission under ISRO's Chandrayaan program. It consists of a lander called Vikram and a rover called Pragyan, similar to those on Chandrayaan-2. Its propulsion module acts as an orbiter. Chandrayaan-3 will explore the Moon's south pole for nearly two weeks, carrying out a series of experiments, including a spectrometer analysis of the mineral composition of the lunar surface.
In 2019, ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 mission successfully deployed an orbiter, but its lander failed shortly before landing. The reason for the landing accident was that the fuel flow to the thrusters did not decrease, causing the engine to generate more thrust than necessary and disorienting the lander. As a result, the camera that should point to the chosen landing site pointed further away. The software was unable to make corrections for this and the vehicle ended up crashing onto the moon's surface. Chandrayaan-3 was designed having learned from the previous mistakes of Chandrayaan-2 and with several corrective measures employed to avoid failures.
The lunar rover 'Pragyan' will take a few hours or a day to exit the spacecraft, but India has already made history by landing a spacecraft on the rugged terrain of the Moon's south pole for the first time in human history. . This mission will allow India to explore whether there is ice or water on the moon. Ice at the lunar south pole could provide fuel, oxygen and drinking water for future missions.
Notably, Chandrayaan-3 was released with a budget of just $74 million, half the budget of the Hollywood film Interstellar. Chandrayaan-3 is just another triumph of India's cost-effective space engineering. Its success came less than a week after the failure of the Russian Luna-25 mission.
Check out the live broadcast of the soft landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission: