India began exploring the lunar surface, a day after it became the first country to land a probe near the moon’s unexplored south pole.
The Pragyan (Sanskrit for ‘wisdom’) lunar rover lifted off from the lander hours after the final stage of India’s ambitious but low-cost space program sparked huge celebrations across the country, AFP reported, quoted by BGNES.
“The rover came off the lander and India walked on the moon!” – wrote the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in X. The six-wheeled, solar-powered rover will circle the relatively unmapped region and transmit photos and science data during its two-week life.
ISRO has released a picture of the moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on August 23 during its descent to the surface. The image shows a relatively flat section of the lunar surface at the south pole.
India yesterday became the first country to send its spacecraft to the South Pole of the Moon. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated his Indian counterparts on this occasion. The Russian spacecraft Luna-25 was also supposed to land there, but crashed into the 42-kilometer Ponteculant G crater.
Politicians organized Hindu prayer rituals to wish the mission success, and students watched the final moments of its descent from live broadcasts in classrooms.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the successful moon landing – so far achieved only by the US, Russia and China – was a triumph for “all mankind”.
Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is a leader in commercial space launches, hailed the landing as “super cool”.
The Indian mission took much longer to reach the moon than the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.
Chandrayaan-3 cost $74.6 million – far less than many other countries’ missions and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering.
Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technologies and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of the wages of their foreign counterparts.
In 2014, India became the first Asian country to orbit Mars, and in September plans to send a probe to the Sun.
ISRO plans to launch a three-day manned mission into Earth orbit by next year.
It also plans a joint mission with Japan to send another probe to the moon by 2025 and an orbital mission to Venus in the next two years.
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2023-08-25 19:25:08
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