“India Achieves Unprecedented Milestone with First-Ever Lunar South Pole Landing”
On Wednesday, August 23, India marked an extraordinary accomplishment as it became the pioneer in landing a spacecraft successfully on the moon’s south pole. The Chandrayaan-3 mission celebrated a triumph when the Vikram lander made a flawless descent and touched down at the moon’s southernmost point by 1:34 pm.
Traveling at an impressive speed of approximately 1.68 kilometers per second, the Vikram lander skillfully adjusted its engines to position the probe vertically onto the moon’s surface. This remarkable feat has never been accomplished before by any other nation – a soft landing at the moon’s south pole, a location renowned for harboring traces of water ice in its shadowy craters.
This achievement marks India’s third Chandrayaan mission. Previous attempts, Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, unfortunately did not achieve successful landings.
The monumental success was met with jubilation across India, particularly in Bengaluru, a southern city known for its space research, where exultant space scientists celebrated the momentous occasion with cheers and applause. After a previous setback in 2019, India now joins the ranks of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China in attaining this significant milestone.
The triumphant lunar mission underscores India’s ascendant position as a technological and space prowess, aligning with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of the country as a burgeoning power on the global stage.
In the coming hours or days, the lunar rover will disembark from the lander and commence a series of experiments, including an analysis of the lunar surface’s mineral composition, as confirmed by S. Somnath, the chairman of the state-run Indian Space Research Organization. This mission is anticipated to span two weeks, with India setting its sights on a subsequent manned lunar endeavor.
India, a nuclear-armed nation that rose to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, has now added the glory of the lunar achievement to its accolades. This achievement is likely to bolster Prime Minister Modi’s popularity in anticipation of an impending crucial general election.
Remarkably, India’s successful landing occurred shortly after Russia’s Luna-25, which aimed for the same lunar region, encountered a setback and spiraled into an uncontrollable orbit before crashing. This would have been Russia’s first successful lunar landing in 47 years. Roscosmos, the state-controlled space corporation of Russia, attributed the failure to a lack of expertise caused by the extended hiatus in lunar research following the last Soviet moon mission in 1976.
