India is on top of moon, literally! Chandrayaan 3 lands successfully; India joins elite four club [details]

It's a proud, historic, momentous, incredible and unbelievably emotional moment for India. Chandrayaan 3, India's third lunar mission, had a successful and soft landing on the moon's south pole on August 23. As of today, only four countries in the world namely Russia, United States of America, China and India have achieved the remarkable feat, so far.

The forty day journey, that started from the space cenre in Sriharikota, ended to a brand new beginning for India, catapulting the nation to the elite space club. The space agencies of the United Kingdom, the United States and European Union have sent congratulatory messages. 

How did the launch go?

Exactly as planned and that is what makes the success a heady and a humbling experience. The Vikram lander began its moon landing descent at 5.45 pm on Wednesday and the touchdown happened at about 6.03pm, prompting the entire control room at the space station to uncontrollable cheers. The nineteen minutes in between felt like an eternity, terror, suspense for the Indian citizens and ISRO. Soft landing on the moon is a tricky one as it involves a series of complicated maneuvers. At 5.50 pm the lander was roughly around 27 kms away from the surface of the moon. India's last lunar mission failed during the last 20 minutes. At sharp 6, the lander was within 1 kms of the landing. 

This was the Plan B

Earlier, Chandrayaan-3's lander module successfully established a two-way communication link with Chandrayaan-2's orbiter. However, despite its technical soundness and meticulous efforts, Vikram (Chandrayaan-2's lander) could not execute a successful landing and infamously lost communication when it reached the altitude as close as 2.1 kilometers from the lunar surface.

India gets lucky on the third try

What makes Chandrayaan-3's success even sweeter is the fact that India's previous attempt to land on the lunar south pole failed in 2019. Moving on, Chandrayaan-2 successfully deployed an orbiter but its lander and rover were destroyed in a crash.

A top official from the Indian Space Agency (ISRO) had earlier said that on case of any any problem in the last minutes, then Plan B would kick in for ISRO if there were problems in the lander system, in which case it would be postponed to August 27 and the new landing site would be 400 kms away from the original landing site on the moon. However, in an interview to IANS, S.Somnath, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said, "the landing is confirmed on Wednesday evening as originally planned." The ISRO also tweeted that the mission is on schedule. "Systems are undergoing regular checks. Smooth sailing is continuing.

PM Modi congratulates 140 crore Indians

Emphasizing the undying efforts of Indian scientists and officials of ISRO, PM Modi congratulated all the Indians. "My heartfelt gratitude to the scientists and congratulations to the 140 crore Indians." Taking a leaf out of the Indian folk tale where the Moon is called a distant object in the galaxy, he said, "Now the generations to come, will no more refer to moon as something that is distant for us Indians."

Huge round of applause goes to ISRO 

Truly the people behind the success, ISRO, within minutes tweeted its achievement to a resounding approval from the netizens. 

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