India Scripts History As Chandrayaan-3 Achieves Monumental Moon Landing

Chandrayaan-3 mission creates history as the Vikram lander makes a soft landing on the lunar south pole at 6.04 PM IST on August 23. This makes India the first country to land on the south pole of the Moon.

With an aim to land on the south lunar pole, Chandrayaan-3 was launched on July 14, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

Chandrayaan-2 was supposed to land in this region in 2019, but it was unable to perform a soft landing and lost contact after hitting the surface.

A lander module, a propulsion module, and a rover make up the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft. The lander module is carried by the propulsion module from launch vehicle injection to a 100-km orbit around the moon.

As Chandrayaan’s Vikram Lander accomplishes a ‘soft landing’ on the Moon’s south pole, the rover, which is a small vehicle that is meant to move around on the Moon’s surface, will come out of the Lander.

The mission's three objectives, according to ISRO, are to demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, to demonstrate a rover roving on the Moon and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.