India has become the fourth country- after the US, China and Russia – to have successfully landed on the moon’s surface, it has earned a place in record books as the first to touchdown on the south side of Earth’s only natural satellite. India’s success in landing the spacecraft on the Moon’s south pole comes days after a Russian probe Luna-25 crashed in the same region. Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft put down the Vikram lander on the lunar surface, descending and tilted to a horizontal position ahead of landing.

“India is on the moon!” Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is currently attending the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg said. He watched the live telecast and as soon as the touchdown happened he sported a big smile and waved the tricolour. ISRO had been releasing a series of up-close images of the moon, assisting the lander module in determining its position (latitude and longitude) by matching them against an onboard moon reference map.

The spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on July 14. A GSLV Mark 3 (LVM 3) heavy-lift launch vehicle was used for the launch of the spacecraft that was placed in the lunar orbit on August 5 and since then it was through a series of orbital manoeuvres been lowered closer to the moon’s surface. Ever since the July 14 launch, ISRO had been maintaining that the health of the spacecraft remained “normal”. On August 5, Chandrayaan-3 was successfully inserted into the lunar orbit with multiple key manoeuvres thereafter.