Historic moment: India prepares to land its spacecraft on the moon

India is preparing to attempt a landing from its ship “Chandrayan-3” on the moon. The Vikram lander was scheduled to touch down at the south pole of the moon shortly after 6 pm Indian time on Wednesday.

India is gearing up for a second moon landing attempt in what is a historic moment for the world’s most populous country, Agence France-Presse reports.

Chandrayaan 3, which means “lunar ship” in Sanskrit, is scheduled to land its Vikram lander shortly after 1800 (1200 GMT) near the little-studied south pole of the moon, a first in the world. event for any space program.

India’s previous attempt failed in 2019, and the latest mission came just days after Russia’s first mission to the moon in nearly 50 years, intended for the same region, crashed on the surface of our planet’s natural satellite.

The former head of the Indian space agency, K. Sivan, said the latest photographs transmitted by the descent vehicle give every reason to believe that the final leg of the journey will be successful.

“This gives some hope that we will be able to carry out the landing mission without any problems,” he told AFP news agency on Monday.

Sivan added that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) made adjustments after a four-year-old setback in which scientists lost contact with the lunar module moments before its scheduled landing.

“Chandrayan 3 will be more durable,” said the former head of the Indian space agency. “We have confidence and we expect everything to go smoothly.”

The lunar mission launched in India almost six weeks ago in front of thousands of cheering spectators and took much longer to reach the moon than the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days, notes Agence. France Press.

India uses missiles much less powerful than the United States did then. Instead, the probe circled Earth several times to gain speed before setting off on its month-long lunar trajectory.

The spacecraft’s Vikram lander, which means “valour” in Sanskrit, separated from its propulsion module last week and has been sending back images of the moon’s surface since entering lunar orbit on Aug. 5.

The day before the landing, ISRO posted on social media that everything was on schedule and that its mission control suite was “brimming with energy and excitement.”

“Smooth sailing continues,” the agency wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

India has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program, but it has grown significantly in scope and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008, Agence France-Presse emphasizes.

The cost of the latest mission is $74.6 million, much lower than other countries, in line with India’s modest space technology.

Experts say India can keep costs down by copying and adapting existing space technologies, and by having an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn several times less than their foreign counterparts.

In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars, and plans to launch a crewed mission into Earth orbit in the next few years, starting with uncrewed test flights in 2024.

Sivan, the former head of ISRO, said India’s efforts to explore the moon’s uncharted south pole would make a “very, very important” contribution to scientific knowledge.

As Agence France-Presse recalls, only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface.