Chandrayan-3: Pragyan rover rolls out successfully near Moon’s south pole
It was a giant leap for India on Wednesday
evening as the Chandrayaan-3 lander module
successfully landed on the moon’s South Pole, making it the first country to
have achieved the historic feat and bringing to an end the disappointment over
the crash landing of the Chandrayaan-2, four years ago.
Officials
at India’s space agency ISRO headquarters
in Bengaluru broke into applause after the Vikram began its powered vertical
descent towards its landing site.
“India
is on the moon!” Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is currently attending the
15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg said. He watched the live telecast and as
soon as the touchdown happened he sported a big smile and waved the tricolour.
The
countdown of the Vikram hovered at 150 metres, then 130 metres, 50 metres and
decelerated as approached the moon’s service before finally touching down on
the lunar surface.As the Vikram lander carrying the Pragyaan rover in its belly
touched down on the lunar surface, it marked a giant leap in India’s
spacefaring journey providing a well-deserved finale to ISROs long years of
toil.
This
makes India becomes the fourth country “ after US, China, and Russia“ to have
successfully landed on the moon’s surface, it has earned a place in record
books as the first to touchdown on the south side of Earth’s only natural
satellite.
Billions
of people across India and globally closely monitoring the much-awaited event.
More so after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on Sunday after spinning out
of control.
In the run-up to the scheduled soft landing of Chandrayaan-3, people across the
country prayed to God in all denominations of places of worship for a
successful mission.
Special
screenings of the soft landing were organized across the country, including
schools and science centers, and public institutions. ISRO made the live
actions available on the ISRO website, its YouTube channel, Facebook, and
public broadcaster DD National TV.
The
scheduled timing for the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon’s south pole
on August 23, 2023 (Wednesday), was 18:04 IST, with the powered descent of
Vikram lander at 1745 IST.
ISRO
had been releasing a series of up-close images of the moon, assisting the
lander module in determining its position (latitude and longitude) by matching
them against an onboard moon reference map.
Historically,
spacecraft missions to the Moon have primarily targeted the equatorial region
due to its favourable terrain and operating conditions. However, the lunar
south pole presents a vastly different and more challenging terrain compared to
the equatorial region The spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space
Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14.
A
GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle was used for the launch of the
spacecraft that was placed in the lunar orbit on August 5 and since then it was
through a series of orbital manoeuvres been lowered closer to the moon’s
surface.
Ever
since the July 14 launch, ISRO had been maintaining that the health of the
spacecraft remained “normalâ€.On August 5, Chandrayaan-3 was successfully inserted into
the lunar orbit with multiple key manoeuvres thereafter.
ISRO
releases pictures captured by imager camera
ISRO released pictures of the landing site of the
Chandrayaan-3 on Wednesday. In the picture taken from the Landing Imager Camera
after the landing, the lunar surface can be seen, which according to ISRO is
the landing site of Moon’s mission. A leg of the Lander Module ‘Vikram’ can
also be seen in the picture released by the space agency.
The image captured by the Landing Imager Camera after the
landing. It shows a portion of Chandrayaan-3’s landing site. Seen also is a leg
and its accompanying shadow. Chandrayaan-3 chose a relatively flat region on
the lunar surface,” ISRO said in a tweet.