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India is set to become the fourth country to make a successful “soft landing” on the Moon’s surface, joining a selected group of nations.
Read More :Meet the individuals behind India’s lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3
With a successful landing on Chandrayaan-3 scheduled on Wednesday, India would also be the first nation to reach the Moon’s difficult South Pole.
If all goes as planned, the Lander Module will touch down around 6.04 p.m. (IST). While Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists have designed a secure soft landing, they are certain that the lander is capable of handling a “rough landing” if necessary.
“If a suitable landing site is not available, the lander can hover like a helicopter.” The Moon’s South Pole is densely packed with debris and craters. The surface is really rough. The landing area has been expanded from 2.5 to 4 miles, according to ANI, citing a former senior advisor for ISRO’s Satellite Navigation programme.
In terms of other countries that have successfully landed on various terrains of the Moon, the former Soviet Union, the United States, and China are the three nations that accomplished successful soft landings on the lunar surface.
Even before the first American Apollo landing on the moon in the 1960s, scientists debated on the availability of water on the moon. The samples returned by the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s appeared to be dry.
In 2008, scientists from Brown University in the United States examined the lunar samples again using modern techniques and discovered hydrogen inside microscopic fragments of volcanic glass. Then, in 2009, a NASA equipment on the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft revealed water on the moon’s surface.
Another NASA probe that hit the moon’s south pole the same year discovered water ice beneath the surface. An earlier NASA mission, the Lunar Prospector, launched in 1998, revealed that the most water ice was found in the dark craters of the south pole.
Scientists are curious because the old pockets of ice may contain knowledge about the moon’s history, the material carried to Earth by comets and asteroids, and the origins of Earth’s oceans.
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