India did it . The lander and scouter of the Chandrayaan-3 mission strive the surface of the Moon , bring as look on Wednesday , August 23 at 12:34 pm UTC ( 8:34 am EST ) . This makes India the fourth nation to successfully voiced land on the Moon , after the Soviet Union , the United States , and China .
Chandrayaan-3 has landed at almost 70 degrees of latitude south , the first mission to res publica at the very intriguing lunar South Pole . Space representation ' interest in the region is due to the presence ofpermanently shaded craterswhere water ice has been find from orbit . Due to the minuscule sway of the Moon , the pole have stale traps where light never reach , and60 percentof them are receive beyond 80 stage of parallel of latitude on the South Pole . This is one of the grounds the Artemis 3 foreign mission place to land humans there in a few year ' fourth dimension , but India will get a chance to explore that first .
set ashore on the Moon remains a phenomenal acquirement . Just because there have been many successful missions , it does n’t intend it is not a gamble . Russia ’s Luna 25crash landing demonstrated on the dot that . And there have been previous attempts byIsrael , aUnited Arab Emirates - Japan partnership , and even India ’s Chandrayaan-2 lander that did n’t reach the surface safely . Although the orbiter part of Chandrayaan-2 continues to perform significant scientific observations around the Moon , including snap some of thehighest - resolution imagesof the aerofoil yet .
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The landing place was a major hurdle , but it is not the only one onward . Being the first at such high latitude is risky business . It is a harsher environment , in the already not - so - well-disposed lunar conditions . The terrain is very furrowed , the handiness of sunlight is decreased , and temperature can get very low . But the mission team is excited to take these challenges head - on .
They will demonstrate the rover ’s power to loaf on the Moon with a mission , and then the lander and wanderer will conduct experiments on the lunar soil . The goal is to work for at least 14 Earth days ( a full lunar twenty-four hour period ) with the satellite working for at least six month . If all goes well , these number will easily be surpassed .
Among the experiment , they will measure the writing of the lunar surface , establish how much ice is in the lunar grease , and seek to better understand how the fragile standard atmosphere of the Moon evolves .
