2023-08-23 18:40:30
India joined at 6:04 p.m. (2:34 p.m. Paris time) the very closed club of countries having placed a machine on the Moon, after the United States, the USSR and China. For about twenty minutes, Wednesday August 23, the country remained riveted behind its screens. All eyes were on Chandrayaan-3, whose landing module dubbed Vikram was beginning its crucial descent to the Moon. The machine, which gradually slowed down its course, finally landed very gently near the South Pole, a region still unexplored. A world first which – once again – brings the Indian space program into history.
It was the second attempt. In 2019, a first Indian mission failed after the machine, which entered orbit around our natural satellite, lost contact with the team on Earth.
Applause and cries of joy rang out Wednesday in Bangalore, in the control center of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the Indian space agency. More than 7 million people also watched the moon landing live on ISRO’s YouTube channel. “The success of the Indian lunar mission does not belong to India alone”said the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, from Johannesburg, where he was to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit. “This success belongs to all of humanityhe assured. We can all aspire to aim for the moon and beyond. »
« Exploration low cost »
Since the departure of Chandrayaan-3 – “moon vessel” in Sanskrit – on July 14 from the launch pad in Sriharikota, in the south of the country, enthusiasm has gripped the country, going crescendo. On Wednesday, thousands of people prayed for the success of the mission across India and schools across the country held special ceremonies.
The Indian space mission, the cost of which does not exceed 75 million dollars (69 million euros) – this is less than the budget of the film Gravity, estimated at $100 million – succeeded where Russia failed four days earlier. Luna-25 crashed on Saturday August 19, two days before the scheduled date of its landing in the same region, after an uncontrolled shift in its orbit. A failure attributed to the loss of expertise of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, due to the long interruption of lunar research which followed the last Soviet mission to the Moon in 1976, and the lack of interest of the Kremlin in this domain.
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