India scripted history on Wednesday becoming the only country to soft-land on the South Pole of Moon. India is also the fourth country – after US, Russia and China – to achieve a successful moon landing. The spacecraft was launched on July 14 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre situated in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Bengaluru from Greece to meet scientists to meet with the team of ISRO scientists behind the successful Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission. As soon as he arrived at the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network Mission Control Complex, PM Modi was welcomed by ISRO chief S Somanath, who he greeted with a pat on the back followed by a bear hug.
Earlier, while addressing his supporters at the HAL airport, PM Modi had said that he could not contain his excitement about the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. “I could not stop myself as I was not in the country, but I decided to visit Bengaluru first and meet our scientists right after visiting India,” PM Modi said, reasoning out his early arrival to the city.
“I requested Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister and governor not to come this early in the morning as I didn’t want to trouble them,” PM Modi said.
#WATCH | Bengaluru: Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets ISRO chief S Somanath and congratulates him for the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon pic.twitter.com/J8cRsftwv2
Indians are waiting with bated breath for the historic lunar landing of Chandrayaan-3 on Wednesday evening. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday said in an update that the Chandrayaan-3 mission is on schedule.
According to ISRO, India’s pursuit of space exploration will reach a remarkable milestone if the Chandrayaan-3 mission is able to achieve a soft landing on the surface of the Moon. The space organization also said that this achievement will mark a significant step forward for India in the fields of Science, Engineering, Technology, and Industry and will symbolise our nation’s progress in space exploration.
CHANDRAYAAN 3 LANDING: WHEN TO WATCH?
ISRO will broadcast the event live on August 23, from 5.27 pm IST on its official website. Chandrayaan-3 is expected to land on the moon around 6:04 pm.
The organization took to X, formerly known as Twitter to make the announcement for the same.
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
🇮🇳Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the moon 🌖on August 23, 2023, around 18:04 Hrs. IST.
People can watch the moon landing of Chandrayaan 3 live on ISRO’s YouTube channel, its Facebook page, and the DD National TV channel. One can also catch the latest updates on the lunar landing on CNN-News18 and other major TV news platforms in the country.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is the third lunar exploration mission planned by ISRO following the failed Chandrayaan-2 mission. The mission serves as a continuation of the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019 and aims to showcase the complete capability of safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years failed when its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after a problem preparing for pre-landing orbit, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once mighty space programme.
Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft at 11:57 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roskosmos said in a statement.
It said a special inter-departmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft, whose mission had raised hopes in Moscow that Russia was returning to the big power moon race.
The failure underscored the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth – Sputnik 1, in 1957 – and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.
It also comes as Russia’s $2 trillion economy faces its biggest external challenge for decades: the pressure of both Western sanctions and fighting the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two.
Though moon missions are fiendishly difficult, and many U.S. and Soviet attempts have failed, Russia had not attempted a moon mission since Luna-24 in 1976, when Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Kremlin.
Russian state television put news of the loss of Luna-25 at number 8 in its line up at noon and gave it just 26 seconds of coverage, after a news about fires on Tenerife and a 4 minute item about a professional holiday for Russian pilots and crews.
FAILED MOONSHOT
Russia has been racing against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on the moon’s south pole this week, and more broadly against China and the United States which both have advanced lunar ambitions.
FILE PHOTO: A picture taken from the camera of the lunar landing spacecraft Luna-25 shows the Zeeman crater located on the far side of the moon, August 17, 2023. Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT./File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
As news of the Luna-25 failure broke, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Chandrayaan-3 was set to land on Aug. 23.
Russian officials had hoped that the Luna-25 mission would show Russia can compete with the superpowers in space despite its post-Soviet decline and the vast cost of the Ukraine war.
“The flight control system was a vulnerable area, which had to go through many fixes,” said Anatoly Zak, the creator and publisher of www.RussianSpaceWeb.com which tracks Russian space programmes.
Zak said Russia had also gone for the much more ambitious moon landing before undertaking a simpler orbital mission – the usual practice for the Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.
While Luna-25 went beyond the earth’s orbit – unlike the failed 2011 Fobos-Grunt mission to one of the moons of Mars – the crash could impact Russia’s moon programme, which envisages several more missions over coming years including a possible joint effort with China.
Russia is racing against India to make an ambitious landing on the moon’s south pole, with its rival having launched its own lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 last month. Space agencies like NASA have detected frozen water in the area’s craters before, but no country has ever ventured there.
Russia launches Moon mission
Russia has reported an “abnormal situation” at its moon-bound spacecraft which launched earlier this month.
Luna-25 is an unmanned robot lander and the country’s first mission to the lunar surface in almost 50 years.
It’s targeting a historic touchdown at the moon’s south pole on Monday, but appears to have run into unspecified trouble while preparing for a pre-landing orbit.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said its specialists were analysing the situation.
No further details have been provided.
It comes a week after the craft’s data-collecting equipment was switched on following its launch from Russia’s Vostochny cosmodrome in the country’s far eastern Amur region.
The size of a small car, it blasted off on a Soyuz rocket and entered the moon’s orbit on Wednesday. It’s since sent back photos of the Zeeman crater, the third deepest in the lunar surface’s southern hemisphere.
Russia hopes when Luna-25 lands, it will spend a year collecting samples of rock and dust to get a sense of whether the moon could support a permanent base for humans.
This snap taken by Luna-25 shows the Zeeman crater on the far side of the moon
Historic trip to find water ice
The region where it’s aiming to land is known for its rough terrain, but is also thought to hold pockets of water ice.
If it does, it could be used for fuel, oxygen, and drinking water, potentially allowing for longer human trips.
Russia is racing against India to make the ambitious landing, with its rival having launched its own lunar lander Chandrayaan-3 last month.
Roscosmos has been keen to prove itself as a “space superpower” since the invasion of Ukraine saw its experts lose access to Western technology.
