On August 23, 2023, the descent module with the lunar rover of the Indian mission "Chandrayan-3" made a soft landing in the southern subpolar zone of the Moon. This event was another triumph for the Indian space
program and made India the fourth country to reach the surface of the Moon after the USSR, the USA and China, reports habr.com.
"Chandrayan-3" was launched into space on July 14, 2023. This is the third lunar automatic station in India, but the first to reach the surface of the Moon. In 2019, the "Chandrayan-2" mission failed, and the descent platform with the lunar rover crashed on landing.
The payload of "Chandrayan-3" consists of six instruments. The descent module is equipped with the ChaSTE instrument for determining the thermophysical properties of regolith, the ILSA lunar seismic activity instrument, and the RAMBHA-LP Langmuir probe. It also carries a six-wheeled 26-kilogram lunar rover that has an APXS X-ray spectrometer and a LIBS laser spectroscope. The flyover module that carried the lander to the Moon remains in lunar orbit and is equipped with the SHAPE spectropolarimeter, which observes the Earth as a simulator of a potentially habitable exoplanet.
The journey from the Earth to the Moon at "Chandrayan-3" was multi-stage. The devices raised the apogee of the near-Earth orbit four times, then flew to the Moon and entered the initial circumlunar orbit, after which they reduced the apogee four times. Then the descent module with the lunar rover separated from the flight module.
On August 23, 2023, "Chandrayan-3" began an automatic landing procedure on the Moon from an orbit with parameters of 25 × 134 kilometers and an estimated landing time of 17:45 Tashkent time. At 15:33 the module landed successfully.
The landing site was an area near the crater Mut in the southern circumpolar zone of the Moon on its visible side. The estimated time of operation of the descent module and the lunar rover is one lunar day.
