After Chandrayaan-3: what India learned at the Moon's south pole
The first craft to land safely near the lunar south pole. What it found in the soil is reshaping the missions that follow.
On the evening of 23 August 2023 ISRO's control room erupted in applause. Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander touched down gently near the Moon's south pole, making India the first country to reach that region. Four years earlier Chandrayaan-2's lander had crashed in its final moments; this time engineers learned from those mistakes, with sturdier legs, more fuel and a much larger landing zone.
Why the south pole? Some of its deep craters have not seen sunlight in billions of years, and scientists think water ice may be preserved there. For people who one day live on the Moon, that water could be drinking water, a source of oxygen and rocket fuel.
What Pragyan found in the soil
The six-wheeled Pragyan rover rolled out of Vikram and travelled about a hundred metres. Its laser instrument confirmed sulphur on the surface, the first such measurement made on the spot in this region, along with aluminium, calcium, iron, titanium and oxygen.
A probe on Vikram measured temperature a few centimetres into the ground. The surface was around seventy degrees Celsius, but it fell sharply just below. Lunar soil barely conducts heat, which matters for anyone planning to build there.
At the end of the mission ISRO tried one more thing: it fired Vikram's engines again, lifted it about forty centimetres and set it down nearby. That small hop shows that a craft that collects samples and returns to Earth is within reach.
What comes next
The landing site was named Shiv Shakti Point and 23 August declared National Space Day. ISRO is now preparing a sample-return mission and a joint polar mission with Japan. Chandrayaan-3 showed that India can do big things in space patiently, cheaply and by learning from failure.
