The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down softly near the moon's south pole at 1233 UTC on Aug. 23. "We have achieved soft landing on the moon! India is on the moon!" Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Sreedhara Somanath announced after the landing which is a historic first.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft launched atop a LVM3 rocket on July 14 from a spaceport in Sriharikota, on India's east coast. The spacecraft entered an elliptical orbit around the moon earlier this month, then performed multiple maneuvers to shift into a nearly circular path, which took it about 150 kilometers above the lunar surface.
The Vikram-Pragyan duo separated last Thursday (Aug. 17), from the mission's propulsion module, which will study Earth from its orbit around the moon. The lander and rover, which had entered an egg-shaped lunar orbit after separation, braked successfully on Friday (Aug. 18) and then again on Sunday (Aug. 20) to get closer to the moon's surface.
While still in orbit around the moon on Monday (Aug. 21) and Tuesday (Aug. 22), the duo established contact with Chandrayaan-2's orbiter, which has been circling the moon since 2019 and will serve as the critical communication link with Earth for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
When the sun rose today on the targeted landing site, which was seen from Earth on one edge of the moon, mission control at ISRO's headquarters in Bengaluru commanded the lander to begin its descent to the lunar surface, activating its fully automatic landing system.
Once the powered descent began, the lander first braked to reduce its height from 30 km to just 0.8 km above the moon's surface. Then, the lander turned such that its altimeters, which measure height to the surface real-time using cameras onboard, faced downward in preparation for landing. Vikram touched down in its target landing area, at roughly 70 degrees south latitude.
"The communication link is established between the Ch-3 Lander and MOX-ISTRAC, Bengaluru," ISRO writes in an update on X. "Here are the images from the Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera taken during the descent."
Vikram is equipped to sense moonquakes near the landing site using an onboard seismometer, and to probe lunar soil to record its temperature.
This landing location is close to where Russia had hoped its first moon mission in 47 years, Luna-25, would land on Monday (Aug. 21). That effort, however, failed when the probe crashed into the moon over the weekend after a final orbital maneuver went sideways.
Over two hours after Wednesday's landing, ISRO posted images to X showing the moon's surface as seen by Chandrayaan-3's during its descent, adding that the agency has successfully established a communication link between the spacecraft and mission control.
A solar-powered rover named Pragyan (Sanskrit for "wisdom") is expected to roll off Chandrayaan-3's Vikram ("valor") lander. The robotic duo will spend one lunar day (about 14 Earth days) exploring its new home, with the goal of collecting scientific data about the moon's makeup before its batteries drain after sunset.
"The whole country is excited about this mission," Anil Bhardwaj, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in India, which built a few of the instruments onboard Chandrayaan-3, told Space.com prior to the landing. "We all hope that we will be successful in ... bringing out new science from this mission."
When the sun sets upon the landing site in two weeks, the robotic duo will be left to fight a frigid night, which will be "very difficult to survive because the batteries will be drained out and it is too cold for electronics," Bhardwaj said. His team has geared up for what they hope will be a busy fortnight: "Our job starts after landing."
"This success belongs to all of humanity and it will help moon missions by other countries in the future," India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a speech following the landing. "I'm confident that all countries in the world, including those from the global south, are capable of achieving such feats. We can all aspire to the moon and beyond."
Chandrayaan-3 mission, which reportedly costs a modest 6 billion rupees ($73 millions), was India's second try at landing near the moon's south pole, a largely uncharted region of immense interest to scientists and exploration advocates alike. The south polar region is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice, which, if accessible, could be mined for rocket fuel and life support for future crewed missions.
The country's first attempt at a lunar touchdown, in September 2019, failed when the Chandrayaan-2 lander crashed into the moon due to a software glitch. Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is a result of close to four years effort, and many design and software upgrades.
Multiple nations -- notably, the U.S. and China -- are all eyeing the moon for future crewed missions. NASA, for example, aims to land astronauts near the lunar south pole in late 2025 or 2026 on its Artemis 3 mission, and to build one or more bases in the region shortly thereafter.
WATCH Chandrayaan-3 probe touchdown