New Delhi:

In August last year, India became the first country to soft land a spacecraft near the South Pole of the Moon. A nail-biting 20 minutes of “terror” consumed most of the country as the Vikram lander module – carrying the Pragyan rover – descended to the lunar surface and touched down in one piece, releasing a flood of relief and joy at the Indian space agency’s mission control.

Six other missions had attempted a soft landing last year. None succeeded, including an effort by Russia’s Luna 25 that crashed 48 hours earlier. And to mark the first anniversary (on August 23) of India’s success, the nation will celebrate National Space Day. A few months earlier, in April, a mission by the United Arab Emirates Lunar carrying a Japan-made lander crashed.

“It was such a beautiful day for India… I had no doubt in my mind – that we will hit the bullseye. I was at ease and the joy of my teammates was lovely…” Dr S Somanath, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, told NDTV, reliving the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

In succeeding where others, including those with vastly better-funded space programmes, had failed, India also had to recover from the heart-break of Chandryaan-2 in 2019, which encountered a terminal problem in the ‘fine braking’ phase of the landing sequence.

And, for their Chandrayaan-3 success, the scientists and engineers were given the first Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar prize.

In fact, India’s third lunar outing went well beyond planned deliverables; the young Chandrayaan-3 team executed an unplanned “hop experiment” and then, in another tricky move, even brought the propulsion module back into the Earth’s orbit.

“Chandryaan-3’s success was a satisfying moment as the unfinished was finished… and at the cost of a single lunar mission, ISRO achieved part of the goals of a subsequent mission… money saved is wealth for the country,” K Kalpana, Associate Project Director for Chandrayaan-3, said.

Dr Somanath concurred, pointing out India had spent nearly Rs 700 crore on Chandrayaan-3 and that it had proven to be money well spent.

ISRO insiders have said the reason for the failure of Chandrayaan-2 was that it was a “rush job” and involved an “under-tested” robot sent to the Moon to meet political ends. In attempting this, technological challenges and hurdles were waved away, they declared.

Crucial design changes were made for Chandrayaan-3. These included the design of a control software to execute a landing even if things go wrong.

The site near the lunar South Pole reached by Chandrayaan-3 could now play host to multiple Moon missions for ISRO, which wants to explore what is scientifically unchartered terrain.

This site, called Shiv-Shakti Point, is of immense global interest as it offers possible access to frozen water. Even the United States is targeting the region through its Artemis program, which includes plans for permanent habitation.

The US’ earlier Apollo landings took place in the easier-to-access equatorial region.

Since India’s success there have been other efforts.

The first private effort to soft land was attempted by Intuitive Machines; a probe named Odysseus attempted this on February 22. It did land but broke one leg while doing so.

Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, or SLIM, made an attempt a month earlier and failed. It had a hard landing and some of its instruments were damaged.

Also in January another private American space company called Astrobotic Technology sent its Peregrine moon lander but that never even left Earth orbit as the rocket carrying it developed a propellant leak.

In June this year China did land on the Moon but on the far side. The Chinese Change-6 probe also managed to bring back samples. No doubt a remarkable success.

India will now also attempt a sample return mission – from Shiv-Shakti Point – in a few years’ time, Dr Somanath said. This will be followed by India and Japan attempting to land a rover larger than Pragyaan through a joint mission, the details of which are still being fine-tuned.

The sample return mission has been dubbed Chandryaan-4 and will also serve as a precursor to a more ambitious challenge – to land an Indian on the moon by 2040, Dr Somanath explained.

India opened the global space community’s gate to the Moon with Chandrayaan-1 and now landing an Indian on the Moon will be the next tremendous achievement for a space programme renowned for frugality and reliability. ‘Chanda mama’ is no longer far away!