2023-08-23 16:27:35
India joined the very closed club of the great space powers, by succeeding on Wednesday August 23 to land a spacecraft near the South Pole of the Moon, a “historic day” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The moon landing of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, which means “moon ship” in Sanskrit, occurred at 2:34 p.m. “It’s a historic day for the Indian space sector”wrote Narendra Modi on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Chandrayaan-3’s triumph mirrors the aspirations and capabilities of 140 crore Indians.
To new horizons and beyond!
Proud moment for ????????. https://t.co/4oi6w7TCGG
Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 23, 2023
He appeared smiling and waving an Indian flag, on the sidelines of the summit of the emerging powers of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), meeting at the summit in Johannesburg. Before India, only the Soviet Union, the United States and China had already managed to carry out a controlled moon landing. This landing comes only a few days after the crash on the Moon of a Russian probe.
Less powerful rocket
This new stage of the Indian program, in full swing, comes four years after a bitter failure, the ground team having lost contact with the machine shortly before the arrival on the Moon.
Designed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 includes a landing module called Vikram, meaning “valour” in Sanskrit, and a mobile robot, called Pragyan (“ wisdom in Sanskrit) to explore the surface of the Moon.
Chandrayaan-3, launched six weeks ago, was slower to reach the Moon than the manned US Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which got there in days. The Indian rocket is indeed much less powerful than Saturn V, that of the American lunar program. She had to make five or six elliptical orbits around the Earth to gain speed, before being directed towards a lunar trajectory lasting a month.
Vikram detached from its propulsion module last week and has been transmitting images of the Moon’s surface since entering lunar orbit on August 5. Once it lands, a solar-powered rover will explore the surface and transmit data to Earth for two weeks.
Qualified engineers
India’s aerospace program has a relatively modest budget, but one that has been significantly increased since its first attempt to place a probe in orbit around the Moon in 2008. This Indian mission, at a cost of 74.6 million dollars (66.5 million euros), according to the media, much lower than that of other countries, testifies to frugal space engineering.
According to industry experts, India manages to keep costs low by replicating and adapting existing space technology for its own purposes, thanks in part to the abundance of highly skilled engineers who are paid far less than their foreign counterparts.
The previous moon landing attempt in 2019, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of American Neil Armstrong’s first moon landing, cost $140 million (124 million euros), nearly double the cost of the current mission.
The first Asian country to place a satellite in orbit around Mars in 2014, India is expected to send a three-day manned mission into Earth orbit by next year.
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