Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: India’s space agency Isro has achieved the unprecedented soft landing of a probe on the Moon’s uncharted south pole.
The mission’s Vikram lander began hurtling towards the lunar surface as planned, travelling at about 1.68km per second, and fired its engines to successfully align the probe vertically to the Moon’s surface.
The space agency‘s teams were awaiting the arrival of the mission’s Lander Module (LM) at its designated point around 5.44pm local time (1.14pm BST) to initate the landing sequence.
The live telecast of the module’s descent phase bagan at 5.20pm Indian time.
Until now, no other country has achieved a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, which is known to contain traces of water ice in its shadowed craters.
The module then made a soft landing as planned on the lunar south pole at about 6.02pm local time (12.34pm GMT/UTC).
“India is now on the Moon,” said Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who addressed Isro staff members immediately after the landing.
India successfully lands near Moon’s uncharted south pole
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.
