India is the fourth country to land on the moon. After almost six weeks of flight time, the “Chandrayaan-3” space probe reached the south pole of the Earth’s satellite, which has so far been little explored.
India became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the moon after the Soviet Union, the US and China. The lunar probe “Chandrayaan-3” touched down on the moon as planned on Wednesday evening Indian local time (about 2:30 p.m. CEST), as announced by the Indian space agency ISRO.
Premier Modi speaks of a big leap
“Soft landing on the moon. India is on the moon,” said ISRO chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of a “victorious cry for the new India”.
The probe was launched on July 14 in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It had first orbited the earth and then switched to a lunar orbit.
Two weeks of research planned
With the unmanned mission, India wants to explore the little-explored south side of the moon for two weeks and find out more about frozen water on the moon, among other things. Such ice could be useful, among other things, in future manned moon missions.
A moon landing is not trivial: the moon is littered with debris from failed missions. Most recently, this also happened to the first Russian moon mission in around half a century: the “Luna-25” space probe crashed on the moon on Saturday. She, too, should have studied a region at the South Pole.
India’s first attempt failed
India’s first landing attempt also failed: Four years ago, the landing module on the “Chandrayaan-2” mission crashed onto the surface of the moon.
India’s space program started in the 1960s. In the first decades, the focus was primarily on launching satellites into space at low cost.
India now has more ambitious goals. Recently, during a visit by Prime Minister Modi to US President Joe Biden, increased cooperation on space travel was announced.
USA wants to fly people to the moon again
In the course of the “Artemis” project of the USA, people should soon fly to the moon again. In the meantime, not only state space agencies, but also private companies are trying to land on the moon.
Moon exploration began in the 1950s during the Cold War as heated competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The Soviets landed an unmanned probe on the lunar surface in 1959. Ten years later, the USA succeeded in the first manned mission with “Apollo 11”. Two years ago, China sent a capsule to the moon and retrieved rock samples.