India is getting ready for Chandrayaan-3, which will attempt to land on the moon.



On Wednesday around after 6 p.m. India time, the Vikram lander will touch down at the lunar South Pole.

Prior to this, only the US, China, and Russia have successfully executed a controlled landing on the moon's surface.

The most populous nation in the world is getting ready for its second attempt to land on the moon.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, the agency wrote, "Smooth sailing is continuing.

India has a very low-budget aerospace project, although it has expanded significantly in size and velocity since it launched its first lunar orbiting mission in 2008.

The cost of the most recent mission is $74.6 million, significantly less than that of other nations due to India's cost-effective space engineering.

According to experts, India can keep prices down by using and modifying current space technology, as well as by employing a large number of highly competent engineers who make a small fraction of what their international colleagues do.

In what would be a first for any space mission, Chandrayaan-3, whose name means "mooncraft" in Sanskrit, is slated to touchdown its Vikram lander just after 6 pm (1200 GMT) close to the little-explored lunar South Pole.

The most recent venture comes only days after Russia's first moon mission in over 50 years, which was headed for the same location, crashed on the lunar surface. An earlier Indian attempt in 2019 ended in failure.

The most recent images sent by the lander, according to former Indian space commander K Sivan, are conclusive proof that the mission's last leg would be successful.

It is encouraging that we will be able to complete the landing operation without any issues, he said on Monday, according to AFP.

When a lunar module lost touch with scientists just before it was supposed to arrive four years ago, Sivan said, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made adjustments as a result.

"Chandrayaan-3 is going to go with more ruggedness," he said. "We're confident that everything will go as planned, and we expect it to."

 

The Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived on the moon in a matter of days, were significantly faster in their arrival than the mission that launched nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of adoring spectators.

India currently employs significantly less potent rockets than the US did at the time. Instead, the probe made many orbits about Earth to pick up speed before beginning its month-long route around the moon.

Sanskrit for "valour," the lander of the spacecraft, Vikram, separated from its propulsion module last week and has been sending back pictures of the moon's surface ever since it entered lunar orbit on August 5th.

The ISRO said on social media the day before the landing that everything was going according to plan and that the mission control centre was "buzzing with energy & excitement."

In addition to planning to send a crewed expedition into Earth's orbit in the coming years, beginning with unmanned test flights in 2024, India made history in 2014 when it became the first Asian nation to orbit a satellite around Mars.

The exploration of the mostly uncharted lunar South Pole by India would provide "very, very important" knowledge to the scientific community, according to Sivan, the former head of ISRO.