India became the first country to land at the moon’s south pole—a logistically challenging achievement expected to kick off a new era of space exploration. It joins the U.S., China, and Russia in successfully pulling off an uncrewed lunar landing.
The presence of water ice has made the moon’s south pole an area of intense interest for space scientists and engineers, but the difficulty of landing on this part of the moon has made it an elusive goal until now.
The water there potentially could be used for drinking, cooling equipment, and producing oxygen at future lunar bases. The water also could be refined into rocket fuel to one-day power missions to other parts of the solar system like Mars, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The Indian Space Research Organization landed a research device as part of its Chandrayaan-3 mission near the lunar south pole on Aug. 23, equipped with monitors for studying seismic activity and carrying out other research. A rover with two different sensors was stored inside the lander.
The U.S. company Intuitive Machines, with its IM-1 mission, also plans to land a device near the region. IM-1 could start in mid-November with a rocket launch.
ISRO's Vikram lander
Intuitive Machines's Nova-C lander
India
United States
Carries a 57-pound rover
to be deployed onto the
lunar surface.
Can carry about 287 pounds of devices to the moon’s surface
Side-mounted
solar array
About
13 feet tall
About
six and
a half
feet tall
Four Thrusters
Main engine
Uses liquid oxygen
and liquid methane as propellants
Russia’s Luna-25 mission would have been the first to touch down at the moon’s south pole, but Russian officials said the vehicle crashed on Aug. 20.
Uncrewed lunar landings are no easy feat. The moon’s almost nonexistent atmosphere makes it harder to slow a descending spacecraft as it approaches the lunar surface. Landers use onboard engines that allow them to lower their altitudes and softly touch down. That is what India pulled off at the South Pole, going from a “rough braking” period during the descent to “fine braking” before the landing.
Such an operation—and any necessary maneuvers on the way down—requires fuel, which can run out. A private Japanese moon-landing mission failed earlier this year after the craft ran out of fuel.
Landing on the lunar south pole is tougher than on other parts of the moon. There, the sun always sits close to the horizon, its light shining on the surface at an oblique angle.
The moon spins almost perpendicular to the plane
of its orbit around the sun, so the sun is always
near the horizon at the lunar south pole.
AXIS
Moon
Earth
Sun
SOUTH POLE
Sunlight hits at a low
angle and terrain can
cast long shadows
across the surface at
the pole.
Towering terrain and deep craters create a shadowy environment that can make it harder to distinguish surface features when attempting a landing. The director of Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, had put the likelihood of a successful Luna-25 landing at the south pole at 70%.
1
2
3
An asteroid strikes the lunar surface creating glass beads from the extreme high temperature
Solar winds bring hydrogen atoms to the moon where they are irradiated and
combine with elements inside the beads
Over time, the beads slowly work deeper into the surface, forming a potential reservoir of water for astronauts
Solar
winds
Irradiation
Asteroid
+
H
+
H
0
H
H
2
2
Impact
glass
beads
0
H
2
Water reservoir
Some of the water on the moon has been found embedded in microscopic glass beads, according to a March paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The beads—which range in size from a few tens of micrometers to a few millimeters—could hold up to 71 trillion gallons of water, the study’s authors estimate.
After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India now joins the United States, the Soviet Union, and China as only the fourth country to achieve this milestone. A lander with a rover inside touched down on the lunar surface at 6:04 p.m. local time, sparking celebrations across India, including in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, where space scientists watching the landing erupted in cheers and applause.
The successful mission showcases India’s rising standing as a technology and space powerhouse and dovetails with the image that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to project: an ascendant country asserting its place among the global elite.
“India is now on the moon. India has reached the south pole of the moon — no other country has achieved that. We are witnessing history,” Modi said as he waved the Indian tri-colored flag while watching the landing from South Africa, where he is participating in the BRICS nations summit.
The lunar rover will slide down a flap from the lander within hours or a day and conduct experiments, including an analysis of the mineral composition of the lunar surface, said S. Somnath, chairman of the state-run Indian Space Research Organization.
The mission, which began more than a month ago at an estimated cost of $75 million, is expected to last another two weeks. Somnath said that India would next attempt a manned lunar mission.
Nuclear-armed India grew to become the world’s fifth-largest economy last year, and the success of the lunar mission will likely help Modi’s popularity ahead of a crucial general election next year.
India’s success comes just days after Russia’s Luna-25, which was aiming for the same lunar region, spun into an uncontrolled orbit and crashed. It would have been the first successful Russian lunar landing after a gap of 47 years. Russia’s head of the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos attributed the failure to the lack of expertise due to the long break in lunar research that followed the last Soviet mission to the moon in 1976.
Modi’s efforts to revitalize India’s global standing — and to finally shake off the legacy of British colonialization — have resonated with many Indians. The moon landing was seen by many as further proof that their country is a rising, modern superpower.
Excited and anxious people across India crowded around televisions in offices, shops, restaurants, and homes. Thousands prayed Tuesday for the success of the mission with oil lamps on the river banks, temples, and religious places, including the holy city of Varanasi in northern India.
As the lander approached the lunar surface, dozens of people in a government-run planetarium started praying with folded hands. They switched to cheering and clapping once the lander touched down.
A man waved a banner reading ’’The Moon in India’s arms.”
Shrini Singh, a New Delhi resident, said she got goosebumps. ’’It’s a very happy moment … you can see the energy. It’s beyond words.”
Mitakshi Sinha, a student, said the successful mission motivated her. “And now I also want to be part of ISRO,” she said, referring to the country’s space agency.
India will host next month’s G-20 Summit, and Modi is expected to use the event to spotlight the country’s growing geopolitical clout. Even as it maintains historic ties with Russia, the U.S. and other Western nations continue to woo India, whom they see as a critical bulwark against China’s growing influence.
Accolades poured in from around the world to acknowledge India’s emergence as a modern space power.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated India on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying ``We’re glad to be your partner on this mission!”
“Incredible!” European Space Agency’s director general Josef Aschbacher tweeted.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 — “moon craft” in Sanskrit — took off from a launchpad in Sriharikota in southern India on July 14.
Many countries and private companies are interested in the South Pole region because permanently shadowed craters may hold frozen water that could help future astronaut missions use it as a potential source of drinking water or to make rocket fuel.
The six-wheeled lander and rover module of Chandrayaan-3 is configured with payloads that will provide data to the scientific community on the properties of lunar soil and rocks, including chemical and elemental compositions.
India’s previous attempt to land a robotic spacecraft near the moon’s little-explored south pole ended in failure in 2019. It entered the lunar orbit but lost touch with its lander, which crashed while making its final descent to deploy a rover to search for signs of water. According to a failure analysis report submitted to the ISRO, the crash was caused by a software glitch.
The $140-million mission in 2019 was intended to study permanently shadowed moon craters that are thought to contain water deposits and were confirmed by India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter mission in 2008.
But India’s space program has been steadily advancing for years.
Active since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. India is planning its first mission to the International Space Station next year, in collaboration with the United States.
The anticipation for a successful landing rose after Russia’s failed attempt and as India’s regional rival China, which landed on the moon in 2013, reached new milestones in space. In May, China launched a three-person crew for its orbiting space station and hopes to put astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade. Relations between India and China have plunged since deadly border clashes in 2020.
Numerous countries and private companies are racing to successfully land a spacecraft on the lunar surface. In April, a Japanese company’s spacecraft apparently crashed while attempting to land on the moon. An Israeli nonprofit tried to achieve a similar feat in 2019, but its spacecraft was destroyed on impact.
Japan plans to launch a lunar lander to the moon over the weekend as part of an X-ray telescope mission, and two U.S. companies also are vying to put landers on the moon by the end of the year, one of them at the south pole. In the coming years, NASA plans to land astronauts at the lunar south pole, taking advantage of the frozen water in craters.
Pallava Bagla, a science writer and co-author of books on India’s space exploration, said the Russian failure days earlier did not put India off. He also said lessons learned from India’s failed mission four years ago were incorporated and a flawless mission was executed on Wednesday.
“Indians didn’t get derailed. They continued the journey with strength and confidence that paid off,” he said.
