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India touches new heights with Chandrayaan 3 success

India’s Chandrayaan 3 lunar mission, launched last month, has finally made a historic landing near the lunar’s south pole which considered to be a troubled area. ISRO chairman S. Somanath and other scientists celebrated this big victory and shared pictures from the Control Room.

The matter is of great pride for whole nation since South pole is a challenging land of moon and many earlier attempts, from all across the countries, has failed, including our Chandrayaan 2 in September 2019, Russia’s Luna-25 recently in 2023 and other missions of Japan, UAE and Israel.

The Lander Vikram made its touchdown at around 6 p.m. IST on August 23, 2023. With this, India became only the fourth country to successfully land on the surface after the former USSR (1956), the United States (1969), and China (2013). The spacecraft is supposed to be there for 14 days and conduct scientific experiments. The south pole region is significant for various scientific research projects as it is considered to be the home of ‘water ice’. This frozen water could be a source of fuel, oxygen, and water for future missions.

The Spacecraft details

The Chandrayaan 3 stands about 2 meters tall and weighs just over 1700 kg (3747.86 lb). it had launched at 2:30 PM IST on 14 July 2023 from Sathish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh). The spacecraft LVM III consists of; Lander- Vikram, Rover- Pragyan to capture data for scientific research purposes and Propulsion module- to carry the lander and rover from lunar vehicle injection to a 100-kilometer circular polar lunar orbit before it detaches from the other parts.

Significance

Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the auspices moment live from South Africa, where he is to attend the BRICS and dedicated the success to not just Indians but to all humanity.

Indians are known for their creativity and sustainability, Chandrayaan 3 is a perfect example of this because the mission completed in the total budget of 615 cr. only which makes it World’s cheapest moon mission ever performed in the history.

The Chandrayaan 3 mission’s success not only elevates Indian’s status, but it will also be a great resource of learning for such upcoming events for the reason that so many countries have planned their mission to moon in the upcoming time. This includes Japan’s- the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASA’s Artemis III mission.

Masterminds behind the mission

Many people worked so hard to make this marvellous day happen, and they all deserve to be recognised and praised. Starting with the Chairman of ISRO- S. Somanath, Project Director- P Veeramuthuvel, Deputy Project Director- Kalpana K (responsible for constructing satellite), and the Head of VSSC (Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre)- S Unnikrishnan.

There are so many more great minds that came together and helped to turned this vision into reality. We cannot forget former ISRO chairman- K Shivan’s contributions and guidance given in Chandrayaan 2, and the lesson learned from the mission. It was developed and used in its best form in Chandrayaan 3.

There is a list of great scientists and engineers who were invested in this mission, of which total 54 members were female. This represents how far India has become both on land and on moon.