India Steps Into
Space History

_India finally stepped into space history by landing a spacecraft on Wednesday, August 23, 18:04, 2023. After the earlier failure of Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, India became the fourth country to achieve the success. The previous countries were the United States, the Soviet Union and China.

As a lander with a rover landed on the lunar surface, Indians around the world, including the southern Indian city of Bangalore, were awestruck by the joy of witnessing such a historic moment alongside a remarkable achievement.

Keeping in mind the reasons for the earlier failures, this new mission was launched more than a month ago, with an estimated cost target of 75 million US dollars. According to ISRO, the mission will continue for another two weeks. Chandrayaan-3's six-wheeled lander and rover module are configured with payloads that will provide chemical and elemental information on the various components of the Moon, such as soil and rock.

This success came just days after Russia's Luna-25 failed, with ISRO choosing the region of the moon where Luna-25 had crashed to land. India's Chandrajana-2 also crashed shortly before landing due to a software glitch.

All over India, and even in many countries of the world, anxious people waited in front of televisions in offices, shops, restaurants and homes for a month. On Tuesday, thousands lit oil lamps at various riverbanks, temples and religious sites, including the holy city of Varanasi in northern India, to pray for the success of the mission.

The first spacecraft to touch the moon was the Russian (then Soviet Union) Luna 2, which landed on the moon on September 13, 1959.

On July 20, 1969, nearly 600 million television viewers watched the Apollo 11 moon landing. Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon that day and said, 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' He and Buzz Aldrin returned to Earth after more than 21 hours of scientific experiments, collecting lunar samples.

China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft successfully landed on the far side of the Moon on January 3, 2019 at 10:26 Beijing time.

In April this year, a Japanese company's spacecraft apparently crashed while landing on the moon. An Israeli non-profit attempted a similar feat in 2019, although the spacecraft was destroyed on impact.

Reference