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Chandrayaan-3 Rover Rolls Onto Moon's Surface as India Celebrates

A man reads a daily hindi newspaper with front page reporting on successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, in New Delhi on August 24, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP)
A man reads a daily hindi newspaper with front page reporting on successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, in New Delhi on August 24, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP)
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Chandrayaan-3 Rover Rolls Onto Moon's Surface as India Celebrates

A man reads a daily hindi newspaper with front page reporting on successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, in New Delhi on August 24, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP)
A man reads a daily hindi newspaper with front page reporting on successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon, in New Delhi on August 24, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP)

The moon rover of India's Chandrayaan-3 exited the spacecraft on Thursday to begin its exploration of the lunar surface and conduct experiments to help future probes, as the media hailed the historic landing as the country's biggest scientific feat. The spacecraft landed on the unexplored south pole of the moon on Wednesday evening, days after Russia's Luna-25 failed, making India the first country to achieve this feat.
The soft, textbook touchdown by the lander after a failed attempt in 2019 sparked widespread jubilation and celebration in the world's most populous country. "The Ch-3 Rover ramped down from the Lander and India took a walk on the moon!" the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
ISRO chief S. Somanath said the "Pragyan" rover had two instruments to conduct element and chemical composition experiments.
"More than that it will do the roving on the surface, we will also do a robotic path planning exercise which is very important for us for future exploration," Somanath told Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake. Accomplished with a budget of about 6.15 billion rupees ($75 million), this was India's second attempt to touch down on the moon. A previous mission in 2019, Chandrayaan-2, successfully deployed an orbiter but its lander crashed. Chandrayaan means "moon vehicle" in Hindi and Sanskrit. Chandrayaan-3 is expected to remain functional for two weeks which equals one lunar day when its solar-powered equipment is built to last. The moon's rugged south pole is coveted because of its water ice, which is believed to be capable of providing fuel, oxygen, and drinking water for future missions, but its rough terrain makes landing challenging.
People across the country tuned in to watch the landing on Wednesday, with nearly 7 million people viewing the YouTube live stream alone.
Prayers were also held at places of worship, and schools organized live screenings of the spectacle for students.
Besides boosting India's standing as a space power and its reputation for cost-competitive space engineering, the landing is also seen as a major moment of national pride.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was being congratulated by everyone since Wednesday evening and the world saw the successful landing not as one country's achievement but that of all of humanity.

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Japan Startup Hopeful Ahead of Second Moon Launch

Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)
Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)
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Japan Startup Hopeful Ahead of Second Moon Launch

Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)
Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi soars through the air during the trial round of the Four Hills FIS Ski Jumping tournament (Vierschanzentournee), in Innsbruck, Austria on January 4, 2025. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP)

Japanese startup ispace vowed its upcoming second unmanned Moon mission will be a success, saying Thursday that it learned from its failed attempt nearly two years ago.

In April 2023, the firm's first spacecraft made an unsalvageable "hard landing", dashing its ambitions to be the first private company to touch down on the Moon.

The Houston-based Intuitive Machines accomplished that feat last year with an uncrewed craft that landed at the wrong angle but was able to complete tests and send photos.

With another mission scheduled to launch next week, ispace wants to win its place in space history at a booming time for missions to the Moon from both governments and private companies.

"We at ispace were disappointed in the failure of Mission 1," ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada told reporters.

"But that's why we hope to send a message to people across Japan that it's important to challenge ourselves again, after enduring the failure and learning from it."

"We will make this Mission 2 a success," AFP quoted him as saying.

Its new lander, called Resilience, will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15, along with another lunar lander built by US company Firefly Aerospace.

If Resilience lands successfully, it will deploy a micro rover and five other payloads from corporate partners.

These include an experiment by Takasago Thermal Engineering, which wants to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas with a view to using hydrogen as satellite and spacecraft fuel.

- Rideshare -

Firefly's Blue Ghost lander will arrive at the Moon after travelling 45 days, followed by ispace's Resilience, which the Japanese company hopes will land on the Earth's satellite at the end of May, or in June.

For the program, officially named Hakuto-R Mission 2, ispace chose to cut down on costs by arranging the first private-sector rocket rideshare, Hakamada said.

Only five nations have soft-landed spacecraft on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and, most recently, Japan.

Many companies are vying to offer cheaper and more frequent space exploration opportunities than governments.

Space One, another Japanese startup, is trying to become Japan's first company to put a satellite into orbit -- with some difficulty so far.

Last month, Space One's solid-fuel Kairos rocket blasted off from a private launchpad in western Japan but was later seen spiraling downwards in the distance.

That was the second launch attempt by Space One after an initial try in March last year ended in a mid-air explosion.

Meanwhile Toyota, the world's top-selling carmaker, announced this week it would invest seven billion yen ($44 million) in Japanese rocket startup Interstellar Technologies.

"The global demand for small satellite launches has surged nearly 20-fold, from 141 launches in 2016 to 2,860 in 2023," driven by private space businesses, national security concerns and technological development, Interstellar said.