Bengaluru: India’s venture in space spearheaded by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) achieved yet another milestone on Wednesday, as it became the first country to land its exploration mission (Chandrayaan-3) on the southern pole of Moon’s surface.
PM Narendra Modi, who is away in Johannesburg, South Africa, congratulated Indians and space scientists for the achievement. ‘India will remember this day forever’ PM Modi said.
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The real test of the mission began at the last leg of the landing. Prior to 20 minutes before landing, ISRO initiated Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS), which enabled Vikram LM to take charge and use its on-board computers and logic to identify a favourable spot and make a soft-landing on the lunar surface.
Experts say that the final 15 to 20 minutes were highly crucial for the success of the mission, when Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander descended down to its soft landing. Indians throughout the country and across the world are prayed for Chandrayaan-3‘s successful landing today.
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Given the history of India’s second lunar mission, which failed during the last 20 minutes before landing, ISRO was extra-cautious this time in the process. Due to high risk to the spacecraft minutes before moon landing, the duration is dubbed by many as “20 or 17 minutes of terror”. During this phase, the whole process became autonomous, where Vikram lander ignited its own engines at the right times and altitudes.
The soft-landing of Vikram Lander was one of the most watched event across the globe, with around 25 million people were watching the celestial event on the ISRO’s live streaming on the YouTube. The event was all the more important, as the Russia’s mission, Luna25, had crash-landed on the moon surface, just a few days ago.
Elon Musk praises Chandrayaan-3 success
Reacting to an exchange on post over successful landing of Vikram lander on the moon’s surface, billionaire and owner of SpaceX Elon Musk said, “Good for India…” with an emoji of the Indian tricolour at the end.
Musk responded to an exchange of tweets which compared the cost of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission, which stood at Rs 615 crore ($75 million) in 2020 with budget of a Hollywood film Interstellar, which was completed at a cost of $165 million. While astounding, the numbers don’t lie – a film about space cost more than an actual space mission. This surprising fact is currently going viral on X (formerly Twitter), where it even caught the attention of Elon Musk.
“Kinda crazy when you realize India’s budget for Chandrayaan-3 ($75M) is less than the film Interstellar ($165M), reads a post by Newsthink on X.
