Chandrayaan-3 successfully lands on the Moon: India makes history

Image credit: ISRO/Twitter

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s historic mission to land on the surface of the Moon was successful. The landing of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was successfully accomplished at around 6pm IST.

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
‘India??,
I reached my destination
and you too!’
: Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 has successfully
soft-landed on the moon ?!.

Congratulations, India??!#Chandrayaan_3#Ch3

— ISRO (@isro) August 23, 2023

Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission

India is the fourth country ever to successfully land a rover on the moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission. Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 and aims to demonstrate the country’s capability in safely landing and roving the lunar surface.

India is the first country to land near the Moon’s south pole.

First images

ISRO released the first images taken by the Lander Vikram.

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
Updates:

The communication link is established between the Ch-3 Lander and MOX-ISTRAC, Bengaluru.

Here are the images from the Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera taken during the descent. #Chandrayaan_3#Ch3 pic.twitter.com/ctjpxZmbom

— ISRO (@isro) August 23, 2023

Chandrayaan-3 landing live stream

The landing of Chandrayaan-3 was telecast live on ISRO’s website, official YouTube channel, and Facebook page. If you missed it, you can catch it below.

ISRO, explained that the Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous Lander module, Propulsion module and a Rover with the objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for interplanetary missions.

Chandrayaan-3 mission objectives:

1. To demonstrate a safe and soft landing on lunar surface
2. To demonstrate Rover exploring the moon and
3. To conduct in-situ scientific experiments

This is India’s second attempt at landing a rover on the Moon’s surface as its previous effort with the Chandrayaan-2 failed in 2019. ISRO’s first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon and was then deliberately crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.

The other countries which hold the distinction of successfully carrying out a soft-landing on the moon’s surface are the US, Russia, and China.

However, Russia’s most recent attempt to land on the Moon failed as the country’s space agency Roscosmos lost connection with its spacecraft, the Luna-25 hours before the scheduled landing.

The UAE too had attempted to land on the Moon through a collaborative project with a Japanese space company. The startup ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 carried UAE’s Rashid Rover – a first for the Arab world. However, the ground operations lost connection with the lander which crashed due to an altitude miscalculation in April this year.