Photo: BBC/COURTESY ISRO / copyright
“ohIndia is on the moon!
With these words, Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated the fact that his country became the first nation on Wednesday to land an unmanned spacecraft near the south pole of Earth’s natural satellite.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission managed to carry a module, which contains a remote-controlled guided vehicle that will travel through this unexplored area of the Moon, to look for water based ice.
This milestone also made India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon.
Unlimited
As soon as the moon landing was confirmed, Prime Minister Modi addressed the nation and assured the feat achieved by his country is proof that “the sky is not the limit.”
“We can all aspire to go to the Moon and beyond”said the president in a videoconference from South Africa, where he is participating in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit.
The Indian mission came days after Russia failed to reach the same area, as its vehicle Luna-25 crashed.
This is the second operation of this nature launched by India. In 2019 the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) tried to place another rover at the lunar south pole, but failed.
promising ground
The Moon’s south pole holds particular promise in the search for frozen water. The reason? The huge area remains in permanent shadow and, therefore, scientists believe that there is a possibility that there is water in that area.
Until now The United States, the former Soviet Union, and China were the only countries that had been able to send spacecraft and make soft landings near the Moon’s equator.. However, none of these three countries had managed to lead successful missions to its South Pole.
Chandrayaan-3 is India’s third moon mission and lifted off on July 14 from the Sriharikota space center in the south of the country.
The lander, named Vikram after ISRO founder Vikram Sarabhai, carried inside its belly the 26-kilogram ground rover called Pragyaan, which means wisdom in Sanskrit.
A complex operation
As soon as the Vikram touched the lunar ground, excitement erupted in the Indian control center. A joy more than justified, because the descent in this area is quite a challenge.
The ship had to land in an area “very irregular, full of craters and rocks”explained from the ISRO to the BBC.
The lander went from a high-speed horizontal position to a vertical position without hiccups. In this phase where the Chandrayaan-2 failed in 2019. The device lost control in the last minutes of the descent, which caused its accident.
Once on the surface and after the dust had settled, the six-wheeled rover rolled out of the module’s belly.
The so-called rover was scheduled to start roaming around the rocks and craters, collecting crucial data and images to send to the landerwhich will transmit them to the orbiter so that it in turn sends them to Earth.
The rover’s wheels are etched with the ISRO logo and emblem so they leave tracks in the lunar soil during their ride, an official told the BBC.
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See original article on BBC