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.
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