India prepared for its most recent attempt at a Moon landing on Wednesday, a historic occasion for the most populous country in the world as it quickly approaches benchmarks achieved by other space powers.
In what would be a first for any space program, Chandrayaan-3, which means “Mooncraft” in Sanskrit, is planned to land shortly after 6:00 pm India time (1230 GMT) close to the little-explored lunar south pole.
The most recent venture comes only days after Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years, which was aimed for the same region, crashed on the lunar surface. An earlier Indian attempt in 2019 ended in failure.
But former Indian space chief K. Sivan said the latest photos transmitted back home by the lander gave every indication that the final leg of the voyage would succeed.
“It is giving some encouragement that we will be able to achieve the landing mission without any problem,” he told AFP on Monday.
When the previous lunar module lost touch with scientists just before it was scheduled to arrive four years ago, Sivan continued, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made adjustments as a result of the failure.
“Chandrayaan-3 is going to go with more ruggedness,” he said. “We have confidence, and we expect that everything will go smoothly.”
In front of thousands of cheering fans, the mission launched about six weeks ago, but it took significantly longer to get to the Moon than the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.
The probe instead orbited the Earth multiple times to pick up speed before setting out on its month-long lunar course since India is utilizing rockets that are significantly less powerful than what the United States employed back then.
