Chandrayaan-3 landing: 3 hours to go for historic Moon touchdown

A fresh moon-race has just begun after nearly 5 decades’ silence. In a few more hours, India will become the fourth country to make a soft-landing on Moon, with Chandrayaan-3, the country’s third lunar mission, scheduled to land on the Moon’s South Pole at 6:04pm(IST) today, 23 August.

Launched on July 14, Chandrayaan-3 will be the fourth, if successfully landed, in the club that includes United States, Russia and China – those who have achieved a soft-landing on the surface of the Earth’s only natural satellite. Meanwhile, India will also become the first nation to reach the celestial body’s South Pole.

Earlier to this, Russian Luna 25 Moon Mission, scheduled to land on the Lunar Surface on 21 August, met to an unfortunate end on 19 August.

After the moon mission, ISRO has a number of projects in queue – a mission to study the Sun Aditya-L1, and a human space flight programme, Gaganyaan.

According to Isro, Aditya-L1 is getting ready for the launch, most likely in the first week of September.