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India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft lands on Moon

According to an ISRO live broadcast, the spacecraft has successfully completed a soft landing on the Moon’s surface

India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft ISRO/EYEPRESS EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft

© ISRO/EYEPRESS EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

NEW DELHI, August 23. /TASS/. India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully landed on the lunar surface, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.

According to an ISRO live broadcast, the spacecraft successfully made a soft landing on the Moon’s surface at 6:03 p.m. (3:33 p.m. Moscow time). ISRO CEO Sridhara Somanath confirmed the successful landing. "The spacecraft has successfully landed! India is on the moon!" the CEO said, speaking from the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), its mission control center.

After that, he ceded the floor to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who joined the broadcast online from the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg to congratulate the ISRO crew on the successful landing.

The Vikram lander delivered a small 26-kilogram Pragyan rover on the lunar surface. Thus, India has become the fourth country in the world (after the USSR, the US and China) that managed to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon.

This is India’s third expedition on the moon. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was sent to the moon in November 2008. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was launched on July 22, 2019, but on this occasion, the ISRO failed to soft-land the module, crashing instead.

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