India Achieves Historic Feat with Chandrayaan-3 Landing on Lunar South Pole

India’s second attempt to land on the Moon, Chandrayaan-3, was launched on July 14 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre Second Launch Pad in Sriharikota. This mission follows the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which unfortunately failed at the last minute. The GSLV Mark 3 launch vehicle, known as ‘Bahubali’, carried the aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians as it embarked on a 384,000 kilometer journey to the Moon, taking approximately 42 days. On August 17, the propulsion module successfully separated from the lander module, and it will now continue its orbit and conduct its own set of experiments.

The Vikram lander, along with the Pragyan rover, began its descent towards the lunar surface and went through a series of maneuvers such as deboosting, reverse thrust and landing phases, all of which were performed by the AI-powered automatic landing sequence (ALS).

And now, the long-awaited moment has arrived – India’s Chandrayaan-3 has landed on the other side of the Moon!

Chandrayaan-3 lands on the Moon

After making its soft landing on the Moon, the Chandrayaan-3 lander sent a message to the nation. “India, I reached my destination and so did you!”, ISRO’s official account on X.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended this historic event from the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, congratulated the entire ISRO team as India became not only the fourth nation to land on the Moon, but also the first to touch the country’s unexplored south side of the moon. pole. “India’s successful Moon mission is not India’s alone… This success belongs to all mankind,” he said.

The entire landing process was carried out in four phases – coarse break phase, altitude hold phase, fine break phase and local navigation phase. Amazingly, there was no human intervention during this time as everything was handled by the Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS) with the help of artificial intelligence. The ISRO team monitored the progress of the Vikram lander from the Bengaluru-based ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC).

One of the biggest driving forces behind the success of Chandrayaan-3 was the failure of their previous mission, Chandrayaan-2, at the very last stage. Kalpana Kalahasti, the mission’s deputy project director, said, “Since the day we started building our spacecraft after the Chandrayaan-2 experience, our team has breathed in and breathed out Chandrayaan-3.