In the new lunar race, India reaches the finish line and Russia remains on th...

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Today, the Indian spacecraft “ Chandrayaan-3 ” became the first to successfully land near the lunar south pole, making India the fourth country to perform a soft landing anywhere on the lunar soil , after the former Union Soviet, United States and China. The robotic vehicle landed at 8:33 a.m. Eastern Time (ET), almost six weeks after its launch. The spacecraft includes a four-legged lander and a small rover whose goal is to study the lunar regolith and search for signs of water ice during a two-week mission.

But the Russian lander, “Luna-25,” was not so lucky . On August 20, the ship bro Phone Number List ke down and apparently crashed while preparing for a planned landing the next day. Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, had intended to send Luna-25 for a year-long mission near the Boguslavsky impact crater, where its eight scientific instruments would also have examined the properties of regolith and water ice pockets.

India is on the Moon: Chandrayaan-3 lands successfully
The landing of Chandrayaan-3 was done without intervention from the ground. The ship's autonomous system took control about an hour before the start of the descent. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the Indian space agency, broadcast live, in Hindi and English.

The depower phase began around 8:15 a.m. ET, during which the spacecraft's speed decreased from 1,680 to 358 meters per second, and the altitude was reduced from 30 to 7.4 kilometers over a period of 11.5 minutes. During the next altitude hold phase, the spacecraft rotated its altimeters toward the lunar surface for 10 seconds to take a reading of its distance from the regolith. Then the precise braking phrase began, which lasted for almost three minutes, while the altitude was reduced to 800 meters.

The vertical descent phase began around 8:29 a.m. ET, and the spacecraft began its approach to the lunar surface, turning to orient its four limbs toward the landing site. It stopped briefly 150 meters from the surface while its sensors took readings of the site's safety and redirected course accordingly. Then, when it successfully landed on the regolith, the people at ISRO's mission control headquarters in Bengaluru burst into applause. “ India is on the Moon! ” exclaimed Vikram Sarabhai, Chairman of ISRO.

Sarabhai then asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was following the broadcast remotely, to speak. “Friends, on this very happy occasion, I would like to address all the people of the world, of all countries and regions. The success of India's lunar mission is not India's alone,” said Modi, during a part of the speech delivered in English. “This success belongs to all of humanity and will help other countries' lunar missions in the future. I am confident that all nations, including those in the global south, are capable of achieving things like this. We can all aspire to the Moon and beyond.”



Broadcast of the Moon landing of India's “Chandrayaan-3” spacecraft.
Roscosmos has released very little information about Luna-25 so far, but officials made brief statements on Telegram indicating that on August 19 the spacecraft malfunctioned while firing its engines to maneuver into a pre-landing orbit. “At approximately 14:57 Moscow time, communication with the Luna-25 spacecraft was interrupted,” the statement read. Roscosmos was unable to reestablish contact with the ship and, according to the agency's preliminary analysis, they believe it was destroyed after crashing into the lunar surface. In an interview on Russia 24 , Yuri Borisov, head of Roscosmos, attributed the accident to engine failure, stating that the engines were incorrectly turned on for 127 seconds, instead of 84, during the operation.

Nearly half a century has passed since 1976, when Roscosmos' Soviet predecessor last sent a successful lander to the Moon. Considering the difficulties of the Russian civilian space program , spirits must be low right now, says Anatoly Zak, creator and editor of the independent publication RussianSpaceWeb . “It is an emblematic mission. In the entire post-Soviet period, they had three attempts to go beyond low Earth orbit and explore celestial bodies: 'Mars 96', 'Phobos-Grunt' in 2011, and this one. They all failed, so it is very depressing,” he opines.