
India has made history as it Moon mission becomes the first to land in th4 lunar south pole region. With this India join an elite clun of countries to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union, and China.
The Vikram Lander from Chandrayaan-3 successfully touched down as planned at 18.04 loal time (12:34 GMT).
India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief Sreedhra Panicker Somanth said the successful landing “is not out work alone, that is the work of a generation of scientists”.
India’ achievement comes just days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the Moon.
The crash also put the spotlight on how difficult it is to land in the south pole region where the surface is very ueven and full of craters and boulders.
India’s second lunar mission which also attempted to soft-land there in 2019 was unsuccessful its lander and rover were destroyed though its orbiter survived.
According to scientist once the dust has settled the six-wheeled rover will crawl out of the lander’s belly and roam around the rocks and craters on the Moon’s surface gathering crucial data and images to be send to earth.
It came 15 years after Chandrayaan-1 the country’s first Moon mission in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime. Despite failing the soft landing Chandrayaan-2 was not a complete failure, its orbiter continues to circle the Moon even today and will help the Vikram Lander and image and data to Earth for analysis.
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