At 14:34 CEST, 23 August, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 Lander Module on the surface of the Moon.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 Lander Module on the surface of the Moon.
Chandrayaan-3 launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota Range (SDSC SHAR), India, on 14 July 2023 on a mission to demonstrate new technologies and to achieve India’s first soft landing on another celestial body.
The spacecraft arrived in lunar orbit on 5 August. On 17 August, the lander module separated from the propulsion module and soon after began its descent to the surface.
On 23 August, after a nail-biting wait, ISRO confirmed that Chandrayaan-3’s lander had successfully touched down in the Moon’s southern polar region as planned.
According to an ISRO live broadcast, the spacecraft has successfully completed a soft landing on the Moon’s surface
“Congratulations ISRO on this historic landing. ESA is proud to support the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Our ground stations are a core element of ESA’s support to its international partners, and I am pleased that with this activity, we are further strengthening ESA’s relationship with ISRO and with India. I look forward to supporting further pioneering ISRO missions, such as Aditya-L1, in the future,” says Rolf Densing, Director of Operations at ESA’s ESOC mission operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
India is now on the moon: PM Modi
India is now on the moon and the success belongs to all humanity, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday as Chandrayaan-3 landed successfully on the lunar surface.
Addressing ISRO scientists virtually from Johannesburg, he said India made a resolve “on the Earth and fulfilled it on the Moon”.
“This is a moment to cherish forever,” Modi said, noting that India has reached the South Pole of the moon, where no country had ventured so far.
When the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) was founded in 1969, its primary goal was fairly simple – to design and launch satellites for forecasting storms, mitigating floods and bolstering telecommunications in the country.
Now the space agency has made history after its Chandrayaan-3 became the first space mission to land near the south pole of the Moon
It’s a huge moment, especially for a country which operates on a fraction of what others spend on space exploration. But behind the milestone mission, dubbed at the most ambitious yet for India, lies years of effort.
In the beginning, India space missions were carried out with the help of other countries and it wasn’t until the 1990s that Isro began to design and launch satellites on its own. Since then the country has achieved significant milestones to emerge as a leader in space missions.
In 2009, India sent a robotic orbiter called Chandrayaan-1 to the moon, which helped discover that water ice can exist on the lunar surface.
In 2014, India successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth nation to do so.
And in 2017, India created history by successfully launching 104 satellites on a single mission, overtaking the previous record of 37 satellites launched by Russia in 2014.