Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday took Indians back the nostalgia lane. During his address to the Indian diaspora in Moscow, PM Modi raked up the success of ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 mission in August last year.
"Today's India makes sure it achieves the target it sets. Today, India is the country that takes Chandrayaan to the part of the moon where no other country in the world could reach," Modi said while addressing the Indian community in Moscow.
With the safe and successful entry of the spacecraft into the lunar orbit on August 5, 2023, India became the first country in the world to touch down near the lunar south pole. ISRO became the fourth space agency to land on the Moon after Roscosmos, NASA and the CNSA.
Chandrayaan-3 was a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 and was aimed at demonstrating the end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. The mission's key objectives included landing successfully on the Moon's surface, deploying a rover to explore the lunar terrain, and conduct scientific experiments to study the lunar surface and its environment.
The propulsion module of Chandrayaan-3, designed to orbit the Moon, has met all its mission objectives successfully, as per Chandrayaan-3 project director P. Veeramuthuvel.
"We brought the propulsion module back to Earth's orbit because we got some propellant available in the propulsion module and demonstrated (our capability) by successfully bringing it from the moon's orbit to Earth's orbit," he said.
The mission's success also caught the attention of popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hailed the achievement as a significant milestone in space exploration. He also emphasised that the success of the mission places India in the elite group of nations that are capable of soft-landing on the Moon.
Tyson told Today News that landing near the lunar South Pole was of extreme importance as that area has remained largely unexplored and holds potential for future missions. Following the success of Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO is preparing for the Chandrayaan-4 mission to collect and return samples from the Moon's surface, ISRO chief S Somanath said on June 26. He further said that the configuration of the mission has been finalised and the project report is awaiting approval.