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Chandrayaan-3 is the third Moon mission by India’s space agency ISRO. The goal is to place a lander and rover on the lunar surface and operate them for roughly one lunar day, or 14 Earth days. The small rover, which weighs just 26 kilograms (57 pounds), will fly to the Moon inside the lander. Both vehicles are equipped with science instruments to study the surface.
The mission began on July 14 with a launch aboard India’s LVM3 rocket, the country’s heavy lift vehicle capable of placing about 8 metric tons into low-Earth orbit. (For comparison, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket can lift almost 23 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.)
ISRO on Sunday said it has successfully reduced the orbit of Chandrayaan-3 mission’s lander module, and it is now expected to touch down on the surface of the Moon at 1804 hours on August 23.
Congratulations, India! It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, as Russia, Israel, and Japan recently found, unfortunately. I hope those three will be inspired to try again, as well.
It also brings into focus the incredible achievement of landing men on the Moon, and bringing them back, on multiple missions, over 50 years ago when computers and other technologies were vastly more primitive.
Congratulations on this accomplishment, India. Yes, it's not a simple thing to safely land on an airless body. Hopefully we'll see more such missions in the near future.
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