Chandrayaan-3: India launched the historic Chandrayaan-3 mission to land the spacecraft on the Moon.
India launches historic Chandrayaan-3 mission to land spacecraft on Moon:
India is trying to become the fourth country to make a controlled landing on the moon with the successful launch of its (Chandrayaan-3) mission on Friday.Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sri Harikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state just after 2:30 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET).
Crowds gathered at the space center to watch the history-making launch, and more than one million people tuned in to watch it on YouTube.
This is India’s second attempt at a soft landing, after the failure of its previous attempt with Chandrayaan-2 in 2019. Its first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, orbited the Moon and then intentionally crash-landed on the lunar surface in 2008.
Chandrayaan-3, developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), consists of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its objective is to safely land on the Moon’s surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the Moon’s composition.
Only three other countries have achieved the complex feat of soft landing a spacecraft on the lunar surface – the United States, Russia and China.
Indian engineers have been working on the launch for years. Their goal is to land Chandrayaan-3 near the challenging terrain of the uncharted South Pole of the Moon. India’s first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1 discovered water molecules on the surface of the Moon. Eleven years later, Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered lunar orbit, but its rover crashed on the lunar surface. It was also supposed to locate the South Pole of the Moon. The question is, this day will always be written in golden letters. At the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the engineers behind the mission, despite the failure, and promised to keep working on India’s space program and ambitions. Just before Friday’s launch, Modi said that “this day will always be written in golden letters as far as India’s space sector is concerned.”
* He said in a Twitter post, “This remarkable mission will carry forward the hopes and dreams of our country India has so far spent nearly $75 million on its Chandrayaan-3 * mission. Modi said the rocket would cover a distance of over 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles)* and reach the Moon in the “coming weeks”.
Decades in the making:
India’s space program dates back more than six decades, when it was a newly independent republic and a very poor country battling a bloody partition. When it launched its first rocket into space in 1963, the country could not match the ambitions of the US and the former Soviet Union, which were far ahead in the space race.
Now, India is the most populous country in the world and its fifth largest economy. It has a growing youth population and is home to a growing center of innovation and technology. And India’s space ambitions are gaining momentum under Modi. For a leader who came to power in 2014 on a ticket of nationalism and future greatness, India’s space program is a symbol of the country’s rising prominence on the global stage. In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars when it sent Mangalyaan into orbit around the Red Planet for $74 million — less than the $100 million Hollywood spent making the space thriller “Gravity”.
Three years later, India launched a record 104 satellites in a single mission.
In 2019, Modi announced in a rare televised address that India had shot down one of its own satellites in what it claimed was an anti-satellite test, making it one of only four countries to do so. In the same year, former ISRO chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said that India was planning to set up an independent space station by 2030. Currently, the only space stations available for expedition crews are the International Space Station (a joint project between several countries) and China’s Tiangong Space Station.
Rapid growth and innovation have made space technology one of India’s hottest sectors for investors – and it appears world leaders have taken note. Last month, when Modi met US President Joe Biden in Washington on a state visit, the White House said the two leaders sought greater cooperation in the space economy and that India’s space ambitions do not stop at the Moon or Mars. ISRO has also proposed to send an orbiter to Venus.
