Chandrayaan-3 update: ISRO achieves historic moon landing

Josef Aschbacher, the European Space Agency’s director general, has sent his congratulations to India on the launch.

India has looked to build a reputation for cost-effective, reliable spaceflight. The latest mission appears to be a great example of that: at $75 million, Chandrayaan-3 cost less than many space blockbusters.

Speaking after the success, mission directors say that the success of this mission will help drive work further into the solar system: to explore Mars, for instance, and other planets nearby. That work has been ongoing for years at ISRO, but this will help, they say.

They also thank everyone for their support. M Sankaran, one of the mission’s leaders, says that even a throwaway remark can be important and inspiring when doing a mission like this.

Following the successful Chandrayaan-3 mission soft landing on the Moon, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi emphatically said “India is now on the Moon.”

“Like every countryman, my mind was also focused on the Chandrayaan mission,” Mr Modi said.

“As soon as new history is made, every Indian is immersed in celebration, celebration has started in every house,” he said, emphasising that the fruits of achievements in space by India will be shared worldwide.

India’s space agency Isro becomes the first in the world to successfully land near the lunar South Pole.

“India is now on the Moon,” said Narendra Modi, who addressed Isro staff members immediately after the landing was announced.

The Moon’s south pole is expected to become a key and contested region in the years to come with research showing it has pockets of water ice that could allow humans to live on the lunar surface.

The mission is set to conduct science experiments on the lunar surface using its various instruments, including a probe to measure the Moon’s surface thermal properties, called the Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE), and one dubbed ILSA for measuring lunar seismic activity.

Chandrayaan-3 is also expected to bring more investment to India’s space startups and institutes.

More on the successful mission here.

The Indian space agency has revealed in its live broadcast, the automatic maneuvers the Chandrayaan-3 mission would be performing in the crucial moments leading to its landing.

Isro tweeted that teams are awaiting the arrival of the mission’s Lander Module (LM) at its designated point around 5.44pm local time (1.14pm BST) to initiate the landing sequence.

In the nearly 1,100 seconds before landing, the LM would initiate its powered descent, following a rough breaking phase initially for about 700s, and then an altitude holding phase and a fine breaking phase.

Then in the lander module’s key terminal descent phase, about 1300m above the Moon, it would fire all its engines to vertically align the lander to the Moon’s surface.

India’s space agency Isro has begun live coverage of the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s attempt to land on the Moon. The mission, if successful, would make India the first in history to touch down on the south pole of the moon, and will make it the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft landing on Earth‘s satellite.

Though countries such as the US and China have successfully landed probes near the Moon’s equator, none have successfully conducted missions to its south pole.

Isro’s teams are awaiting the arrival of the mission’s Lander Module (LM) at its designated point around 5.44pm local time (1.14pm BST) to initiate the landing sequence, the agency noted in a tweet.

Isro shared the first images taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on 7 August just as it successfully entered lunar orbit, carrying the mission’s “Vikram” lander and “Pragayan” rover.

These images taken after the spacecraft spent about 10 days orbiting Earth, revealed in detail the craters on the Moon, appearing larger as the spacecraft got closer to the lunar surface.

Then on Monday, the Indian space agency revealed many more close-up photos of the lunar surface taken by Vikram’s Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance Camera (LHDAC).

The camera, according to Isro, helps assist in finding a safe landing area on the Moon’s South Pole without boulders or deep trenches during the challenging descent.

India’s previous Moon missions Chandrayaan-1 launched in 2008, and its successor in 2019, have made significant discoveries, shedding more light on the Moon’s geology and successfully demonstrating new technology.

Chandrayaan-1 was an orbiting mission, which circled around the Moon at a height of about 100km, and conducted chemical and mineralogical mapping of the lunar surface.

Making over 3,400 trips around the moon, the orbiter helped find deposits of frozen water in the Moon’s polar regions, which have paved the way for India’s succeeding missions to the lunar surface.

Data from instruments aboard Chandrayaan-1 helped create the first map of ice water trapped in lunar soil, and has also aided in publishing scientific studies on the prevalence of hydroxyl, an ion made of hydrogen and oxygen, on the Moon.

Chandrayaan-2 attempted to demonstrate soft landing capabilities on the Moon as well as rover maneuvering on the lunar surface.