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In India, 2023 will be remembered as the year we went to the Moon.
On 23 August, massive celebrations broke out across the country when Chandrayaan-3 touched down in the lunar south pole region – an area on the Moon’s surface that no-one had reached before.
With this, India also joined an elite club of countries to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
In the following months, India continued its stride into space – by sending an observation mission to the Sun and then by carrying out a key test flight ahead of its planned mission to take astronauts into space in 2025.
We look back at an eventful year when India’s strides into space made global headlines.
It was “20 minutes of terror” for scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) as the Vikram lander, carrying the Pragyaan rover in its belly, began its descent to the Moon’s surface.
The lander’s speed was gradually reduced from 1.68km per second to almost zero, enabling it to make a soft landing in the south pole region where the surface is “very uneven” and “full of craters and boulders”.
“India is on the Moon,” a triumphant Isro chief S Somanath announced – and with that the country entered the history books.
Over the next 10 days, space scientists – and the rest of the country – followed every move made by the lander
The post Chandrayaan, Aditya-L1, Gaganyaan: The year India reached the Moon – and aimed for the Sun appeared first on EnviroLink Network.