Just days after the Russian Luna-25 mission failed in its attempt to land on the southern region of the Moon, the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the Moon. With this achievement, India goes down in history as the first country to land on the south pole of the Moon and the fourth to land on the satellite, the other three being the United States, China and Russia.
The achievement also marks a major step forward for India in the ongoing "lunar race", with several countries already planning missions to study the hitherto unexplored region.
A big step for India: mission to study an unexplored region
Supported by the European space agency ESA and NASA, the Chandrayaan-3 mission features a lander called Vikram and a spacecraft called Pragyan. Launched on July 14, it successfully landed today, August 23.
The landing date was chosen strategically, as the sun rises today in this particular region of the Moon. The mission is scheduled to last two weeks, the exact period during which the site will have sunlight. During this time, the solar-powered lander and rover will perform thermal, seismic and mineralogical measurements.
The rebroadcast of the Chandrayaan-3 landing, viewed by some 7 million viewers on the Indian Space Research Organization's YouTube channel, can still be seen in the video above. With far fewer financial resources than the other countries in the lunar race, India welcomes the achievement with great pride.
During the landing, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a video call from South Africa directly to the control room in Bengaluru:
"This is an unprecedented moment. This is the moment of a new and developing India. This is the moment of 1.4 billion Indians."
This is not the first achievement of the Indian space program, which has already succeeded in orbiting Mars and the Moon, in addition to having satellites over the Earth. However, this landing makes the Indian nation the first success among the countries in the new lunar race, as well as the fourth nation to land on the Moon in history.
India takes the lead in the "lunar race".
The last few years have seen great interest from different countries in our natural satellite. More than 54 years after man first landed on the Moon, nations such as the United States, Russia, China and India have already announced new missions. The goal, however, is now different: to explore new resources and establish a human presence for future space exploration.
According to NASA data, the Moon's hitherto unexplored south pole may harbor important resources, such as minerals and, most importantly, water. The region is believed to have deposits of frozen water. If this turns out to be the case, scientists hope to conduct research on the use of H2O to enable human presence on Earth's satellite.
Whether to extract oxygen for human respiration or to make fuels, the presence of water is essential to complete the goal of the current lunar missions: to build a space station in orbit of the satellite, which will be a step toward exploration of other parts of space.
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