India achieves first descent near the lunar south pole, in the face of Russia’s failure

India achieved this Wednesday the first descent of a automatic ship near to lunar south polea historic triumph for the world’s most populous country and its ambitious space program Low cost.

The Chandrayaan-3 ship, which means “moon ship” in Sanskrit, landed on the moon at 6:04 p.m. in India (12:34 p.m. GMT), to the applause of engineers. This successful moon landing comes a few days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region, and four years after the previous Indian attempt failed at the last minute.

The first Minister, Narendra Modismiled while waving a flag India on live television to announce the success of the mission.

”On this happy occasion I would like to address the peoples of the worldModi said on the sidelines of the BRICS diplomatic summit in South Africa. ”The success of the lunar mission of the India it’s not just the India”, he added. “This success belongs to all humanity”.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission captured public attention since its liftoff six weeks ago in front of thousands of excited onlookers.

Politicians held Hindu prayer rituals to wish the mission a success, and in schools, students watched the last moments of the landing broadcast live.

Chandrayaan-3 took much longer to reach the Moon than the US Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which reached the moon in a few days.

India uses less powerful rockets than those used then by USAhence the probe had to orbit several times in the Land to gain speed before heading to the Moon.

The Vikram lunar landing module, “worth” in Sanskrit, separated from the propulsion module last week and has been sending images of the lunar surface since it entered its orbit on August 5.

Now that Vikram has landed on the moon, a solar-powered rover will scan the surface and transmit data to the Land during his two weeks of autonomy.

ambitious program

India It has a low-cost aerospace program compared to other powers, but it has grown remarkably since it sent its first spacecraft into orbit. Moon in 2008.

He budget for this mission is US$74.6 million, proof of frugal Indian space engineering. Experts say that it achieves these low costs by copying and adapting space technology and taking advantage of the abundance of highly trained engineers who charge much less than their foreign counterparts.

In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars and next year plans to launch a three-day manned mission to the earth orbit.

Wednesday’s success was highly anticipated by the Space Research Organization of the India (ISRO) following the frustrating failure of their previous mission in 2019, when they lost contact with the Chandrayaan-2 lunar module moments before its scheduled landing.

K. Sivan, the former head of ISRO, said that India’s exploration of the relatively unknown south pole of the moon will be a contributionvery very important” to scientific knowledge.

Only Russia, USA and China have managed to carry missions to the surface of the Moon. Russia launched its first lunar mission in almost half a century earlier this month, but the Luna-25 probe crashed while attempting to land on the moon. If you were successful, Russia would have become, by just a few days’ advantage, the first nation to reach the polar region.

With information from Reuters.