India’s Chandrayaan-3 Successfully Lands on the Moon’s South Pole
The South Pole is site where the presence of water, vital to base development, has been found.
We have been following India’s Chandrayaan mission launches as its scientists and engineers strove to complete a lunar landing successfully.
It appears the adage, “three times the charm,” is entirely appropriate for this historical event.
India staked new claim as a national superpower in space on Wednesday, landing its Chandrayaan-3 mission safely on the moon’s unexplored south pole.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft launched last month and touched down on the lunar surface around 8:34 a.m. ET.
The feat makes India the fourth country to land on the moon, and the first to land on one of the moon’s lunar poles. Previously, Russia (then the Soviet Union), the U.S. and China landed spacecraft successfully on the moon.
Why has the Moon’s South Pole become such a location of interest to the international space community? The answer is: Water.
As early as the 1960s, before the first Apollo landing, scientists had speculated that water could exist on the moon. Samples the Apollo crews returned for analysis in the late 1960s and early 1970s appeared to be dry.
In 2008, Brown University researchers revisited those lunar samples with new technology and found hydrogen inside tiny beads of volcanic glass. In 2009, a NASA instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 probe detected water on the moon’s surface.
In the same year, another NASA probe that hit the south pole found water ice below the moon’s surface. An earlier NASA mission, the 1998 Lunar Prospector, had found evidence that the highest concentration of water ice was in the south pole’s shadowed craters.
WHY IS WATER ON THE MOON IMPORTANT?
Scientists are interested in pockets of ancient water ice because they could provide a record of lunar volcanoes, material that comets and asteroids delivered to Earth, and the origin of oceans.
Establishing a lunar base will take a great deal of water. Considering water weighs 8.34 pounds per gallon, it would be very cost-effective and mission-efficient if water were already available at the destination. Hence, the importance of India’s successful landing cannot be overstated.
For those of you interested, Chandrayaan means “mooncraft” in Sanskrit. It will be conducting a series of experiments over the next 2 weeks.
The lunar rover will slide down a flap from the lander within hours or a day and conduct experiments, including an analysis of the mineral composition of the lunar surface, said S. Somnath, chairman of the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The mission, which began more than a month ago at an estimated cost of £59 million, is expected to last another two weeks. Mr Somnath said that India would next attempt a manned lunar mission.
Nuclear-armed India grew to become the world’s fifth-largest economy last year, and the success of the lunar mission is likely to help Mr Modi’s popularity ahead of a crucial general election next year.
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
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 🙂… pic.twitter.com/xi7RVz5UvW
— ISRO (@isro) August 23, 2023
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Comments
I’ve worked with Hindu mindset.
How many lives were expended to get that one man there?
Final question…is the soul that splashed down the same soul that lifted off?
Perhaps I don’t get the joke, but what man?
Good for India! I noted PM Modi in his remarks while visiting South Africa, that he struck a Neil Armstrong tone. A nice touch..
Then there were four.
Only four countries have landed softly upon the Moon: The USA, Russia, China and India.
USSR-now Russia. The Russian craft reached the moon surface rather abruptly the other day..
Probably related to drunkenness 🙂
Fake!
Did you watch the video? Did you see that super fake lander from a third person perspective?? Who was filming that prop???
Instead of planting a flag, wouldn’t India leave a clearer brand if it had just distributed some ordinary trash and junk at the Moon’s South Pole? That way, India’s ownership of this historic first would be unmistakable to any subsequent explorers.
The rover wheels have an India Space Organization symbol engraved into them. When the rover moves it leaves a trail of these symbols in the lunar soil.
Is that true? Great touch if it is
I was surprised and a little disappointed that I didn’t read about this mission until after the craft had landed. It’s a huge, exciting achievement, even if it wasn’t done by Americans. I’m not faulting Leslie here, of course. This should have been big, world-wide news.
It’s just another sign that excellence in human achievement does not interest our media, any more.
Congratulations to India! Outstanding job!
How many of the alphabet-mafia were part of the Indian team that accomplished this feat?
The LGB mafia, or the CIA mafia?
Most of the world has their heads stuck ……
I read a good deal of news including several oversea sources and this was the first I heard of an ongoing lunar mission from India.
The thing is, my phone has about the same computing power as was available to NASA when they placed and returned humans from the moon 50 years ago. This was a good effort, but hardly groundbreaking in any sense of the word (only the Russian program is currently ground breaking 😉 )
Yet India has a population, many without running water
When we landed I lived in a place with an outhouse. All societies have stratification
BTW: my summer home has an outhouse, no electricity and water from a spring
There was a nature show a few years back which showed tigers stalking wild pigs within the city limits of a large metropolitan area in India. And then I thought about the coyotes and cougars within Portland’s city limits that were preying on pets. Every country has a distribution of first world to third world within its borders. The big difference is the percentage of the population in those categories. Ironically, our population without running water will soon be found mostly in Southern Kalifornia. 😉