India moon landing: Chandrayaan-3 successfully lands on lunar surface

India moon landing: Chandrayaan-3 successfully lands on lunar surface

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The moon received a new visitor from planet Earth on Wednesday as India staked a bold new claim in the global space race.

India’s spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 safely landed on the surface of the moon on Wednesday, closer to the moon’s unexplored south pole.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the landing from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS summit. He congratulated the whole nation and mentioned that India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone, this success belongs to all humanity. He added, “ We can all aspire for the moon, and beyond.”

This was India's second attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon and comes less than a week after Russia's Luna-25 mission failed to accomplish the same goal. 

Chandrayaan-3 is certainly the third Indian lunar exploration mission under the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Chandrayaan programme. It consists of a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan, similar to those of the Chandrayaan-2 mission. The propulsion module carried the lander and rover configuration to lunar orbit in preparation for a powered descent by the lander.

Chandrayaan-3 was launched on 14 July 2023. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit on 5 August, and the lander touched down in the lunar south pole region on 23 August 2023 at 18:02 IST, making India the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon, and the first to do so near the lunar south pole.

The Moon is certainly Earth's only natural satellite. Its diameter is about one-quarter of Earth's (comparable to the width of Australia), making it the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet. It is larger than all known dwarf planets in the Solar System. The Moon is a planetary-mass object with a differentiated rocky body, making it a satellite planet under the geophysical definitions of the term. It lacks any significant atmosphere, hydrosphere, or magnetic field. Its surface gravity is about one-sixth of Earth's at 0.1654 g—Jupiter's moon Io is the only satellite in the Solar System known to have a higher surface gravity and density.

The Moon really orbits Earth at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), or about 30 times Earth's diameter. Its gravitational influence is the main driver of Earth's tides and very slowly lengthens Earth's day. The Moon's orbit around Earth has a sidereal period of 27.3 days. During each synodic period of 29.5 days, the amount of the Moon's Earth-facing surface that is illuminated by the Sun varies from none up to nearly 100%, resulting in lunar phases that form the basis for the months of a lunar calendar. The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, which means that the length of a full rotation of the Moon on its own axis causes its same side (the near side) to always face Earth, and the somewhat longer lunar day is the same as the synodic period. Due to cyclical shifts in perspective (libration), 59% of the lunar surface is visible from Earth.