India enters lunar explorers club

NEW DELHI: As India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission achieved a successful lunar landing, it catapulted the nation into an elite club of lunar explorers. Citizens across India gathered in schools, workplaces, public squares, and religious venues to witness the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) live telecast of Chandrayaan-3's final descent to the uncharted lunar south pole. The remarkable achievement places India as the first country to land on this uncharted lunar terrain.

Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2, with objectives encompassing a safe and soft lunar landing, lunar roving, and insitu scientific experiments.

Chandrayaan-3 mission’s lander ‘Vikram’ chose a relatively flat region on the lunar surface to touch down, images captured by its camera showed. Soon after Vikram, with four landing legs, successfully reached the Moon, these images captured by the Landing Imager Camera after the landing showed a portion of Chandrayaan-3's landing site. “Seen also is a leg and its accompanying shadow,” Isro noted. “Chandrayaan-3 chose a relatively flat region on the lunar surface,” the space agency said.

It also said a communication link was established between the lander and the space agency’s Mission Operations Complex (MOX) here. The MOX is located at the Usri Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (Istrac). Isro also released images from the Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera taken during the descent to the Moon’s surface.