India’s Chandrayaan-3 probe, which successfully landed in the moon’s south polar region today, an unprecedented achievement for space exploration, sent its first image of the lunar soil to Earth.
The image captured by one of the mill’s instruments shortly after landing shows a relatively flat area.
India’s Space Research Agency has also released images of the lunar soil during the final phase of the device’s descent on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Launched into space in July, the device is equipped with a robotic vehicle that will soon detach from the main device and explore the landing site and conduct a series of science experiments.
The successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 at 1:33 p.m. (Lisbon time) made India the first country to successfully land a spacecraft at the moon’s south pole, an unexplored region that will be home to large amounts of ice water.
For Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today was “a historic day” for the country.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission will last 14 days on the lunar surface, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA), which monitors the mission through its telemetry and science data transmission stations.
The landing of Chandrayaan-3 took place a few days after Russia, which had already congratulated India on today’s achievement, failed to land the Luna-25 probe in the same region of the moon.
It is at the south pole of the moon that the United States aims to place the first female astronaut and the first black astronaut under the new Artemis lunar program in December 2025.
Only the United States had astronauts on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, all of them male, under the Apollo program.
The United States, Russia (former Soviet Union), and China had already sent spacecraft to the moon, but to other parts of the surface.
Source: DN
