Chandrayaan-3 Brightens the Surface of the Dark Side of the Moon

After travelling through space for more than a month, at 6:04 P.M. (IST) Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the South Pole of the Moon 🌕!!! India is the first country to have soft landed on the lunar south pole. This marks an enormous achievement for ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). The Pragyaan rover is soon set to roll out of Vikram (lander). This rover will look for signs of water in the permanently shadowed regions of craters of the Moon.

The Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan-3.
Credit: Lakshay V (own creation)

This comes as an enormous boost to ISRO after the crash of the previous Chandrayaan mission (Chandrayaan-2). The lander and rover have been designed to work for at least 14 Earth days or one lunar day, but may survive for another lunar day if all the instruments are in good condition.

The landing was accompanied by loud cheers and applause from the control room of ISRO. The landing was virtually attended by the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi virtually from South Africa, where he is attending a BRICS summit.

The landing of Vikram kicked up a lot of fine lunar dust. The Pragyan rover will come out only when this dust has settled, which will take longer than on Earth due to the small gravitational field.

Interesting Fact: The total budget of Chandrayaan-3 was 615 crore Rupees, which is less than half of the budget of the movie "Interstellar"!

ISRO has various other missions planned in the future, the most recent one being the launch of Aditya-L1, which will study the Sun, in September.

A very proud moment for us Indians. Hats off to ISRO and the enormous team of scientists, engineers, mission specialists who made this mission possible.

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Cheers,

Aarav Iyer