India writes history as the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 makes a soft landing on the Moon’s South pole. India became the first country to achieve the feat. 

After a 40-day journey, the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan-3 has successfully landed on the Moon at the scheduled time, i.e. 06:04 pm on August 23. The landing sequence was started at 05:44 pm by ISRO. 

The lander is carrying a suite of payloads, including a small rover. According to the ISRO’s mission profile, the lander and the rover are expected to have a mission life of just one lunar day, translating to 14 Earth days due to lack of sunlight on the Moon’s South Pole. However, they are confident the rover will restart itself after a full orbit of the Moon. 

Chandrayaan 3 lifted off on July 14, 2023, on a Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3) from Satish Dhawan space centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota. The mission’s primary objective was to showcase the space agency’s capability to complete a soft landing on the Moon. With the landing, India has joined a small and exclusive club of countries, the United States, the Soviet Union and China, that have managed to land on the Moon.

With the recent crash of Russia’s Luna 24 probe, the loss of the Japanese privately-operated Hakuto-R Mission 1 and the failure of India’s own Chandrayaan 2 lander in September 2019, the lunar landings have proved challenging.

In his address after the landing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that ISRO is working on the Aditya L1 to study the sun and solar atmosphere. He added that the organisation also plans to go to Mars.