India made history on Wednesday as its Moon mission became the first to land in the lunar south pole region. The triumph came 72-hours after a Russian attempt to make a similar landing ended in spectacular failure.
India is now part of an elite club of countries to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the U.S., the former Soviet Union and China, the BBC reports.
India erupted in celebrations after the successful touchdown by the robotic lander which is carrying a rover in its belly.
The BBC detailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the successful landing “a joyous occasion.”
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief S. Somanath (2L) and Minister of State for the Ministry of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh (R) hold a model of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 during a press conference, after its launch. (R.SATISH BABU/AFP via Getty Images)
School students look at a model of Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) named as Vikram, at a technical museum in Kolkata on August 23, 2023. (DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images)
“We have reached where no other country could,” he said. Modi was watching the event live from South Africa where he is attending the Brics summit.
As India celebrated, Russia is still trying to discern just where it went wrong.
As Breitbart News reported, Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft tumbled into an uncontrolled orbit Sunday and slammed into the lunar surface, thus robbing it of the chance to get there before India.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said it lost contact with Luna-25 on Saturday, 47 minutes after a thruster misfired during an orbital adjustment burn. The misfire created an “emergency situation” that Roscomos did not elaborate on.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” Roscomos said.
People wave Indian flags as an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) rocket carrying the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft lifts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, an island off the coast of southern Andhra Pradesh state on July 14, 2023. (R.SATISH BABU/AFP via Getty Images)
The Luna-25 mission, launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome on August 10, was Russia’s first moon shot since 1976.
Ten more lunar missions have been announced by the United States, Israel, China, Japan, and India over the next two years. NASA said last week the launch tower for the manned Artemis-2 mission has been moved to its pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning extensive tests in preparation for a ten-day manned flight to lunar orbit.
