After the US, China and the former Soviet Union, India today became the fourth country in the world to send a spacecraft to the lunar surface as India’s Chandrayaan-3 rocket successfully landed on the moon’s South Pole.

The news of the successful landing on the moon was announced by the Indian Space Research Organization, a few days after the crash of the Russian spacecraft Luna-25 in the same, unexplored, region of the Moon.

The Indian Prime Minister expressed the nation’s congratulations to the scientists, calling today a “historic” day.

This was India’s second – and lucky – attempt to send a robotic craft to the surface of an Earth satellite.

Her previous attempt with ‘Chandrayaan-2’, in 2019, had failed.

The rocket carrying the Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft, which means “lunar vehicle” in Sanskrit, blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh shortly after 2:30 p.m. local time yesterday (12 PM Greek time).

India

Crowds of people had gathered at the space center to watch the historic launch and more than a million people tuned into the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) YouTube channel to watch it ‘live’.

Chandrayaan-3 consists of the lander, the propulsion unit and the robotic rover. Its goal is to collect data and conduct a series of experiments that will help scientists understand the composition of the lunar subsoil.