Chandrayaan-3

• 1. Chandrayaan-3

  ›

  Chandrayaan-3's landing on the 23rd of August 2023 drew eight million concurrent viewers to a single YouTube livestream. That number set a record in the platform's history for any live video. They were watching India's space agency, ISRO, attempt something no agency had done before: a controlled landing near the lunar south pole. The Vikram lander settled at 69 degrees south latitude. ISRO became only the fourth national space agency to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, joining the Soviet space program, NASA, and China's CNSA. Four years earlier, ISRO's previous lander had crashed during a nearly identical approach. Had the agency found and corrected what went wrong? And once Vikram was down, what would it find at a latitude no spacecraft had stood on before?

• 2. Lessons from 2019

  ›

  On the 22nd of July 2019, ISRO launched Chandrayaan-2 on a Launch Vehicle Mark-3 rocket, carrying an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The lander was scheduled to touch down on the 6th of September 2019 near the lunar south pole. It never arrived. During descent, it lost contact with mission control, deviated from its planned trajectory, and crashed. ISRO engineers later identified altitude increase during the camera coasting phase as one of the main causes of the failure. One part of the mission survived: the orbiter continued operating after the crash. Its ongoing lunar observations would later inform the selection of Chandrayaan-3's landing zone. In December 2019, ISRO filed its initial funding request for a replacement mission.

• 3. Ice at the Poles

  ›

  Mountains and craters define the terrain of the lunar south pole, generating unpredictable lighting conditions. That lighting shields ice from melting, but it also makes landing there a challenging undertaking for any scientific probe. Studies show the region holds large amounts of ice, and that ice likely preserves solid-state compounds that would break down under the warmer temperatures found elsewhere on the Moon. Analysing those compounds could offer insight into the histories of the Moon, the Earth, and the Solar System.

  Hydrogen, present in the south polar ice, makes it a potential source of fuel for crewed missions and outposts. The same ice could provide drinking water and oxygen, offering future inhabitants of the Moon a locally available resource rather than one transported from Earth.

  The European Space Agency's ESTRACK tracking network and NASA's Deep Space Network both supported Chandrayaan-3 under a new cross-support arrangement. In exchange, ESA agreed to provide tracking for upcoming ISRO missions, including the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme. ISRO's own stations would support future ESA missions in return. The arrangement also extended to ISRO's Aditya-L1 solar research mission.

• 4. Built to Land

  ›

  Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander carried four variable-thrust engines, each producing up to 800 newtons of thrust. Chandrayaan-2's lander had carried five engines, one of them centrally mounted and limited to fixed thrust. With that constraint removed, Vikram could modulate its thrust during every phase of descent. ISRO also raised the altitude correction rate from 10 degrees per second to 25 degrees per second. A laser Doppler velocimeter was added, enabling the lander to measure its own altitude from three directions simultaneously. Impact legs were reinforced, instrument polling frequency was increased, and multiple contingency systems were installed to improve survivability during descent.

  The Pragyan rover, which Vikram carried to the surface, weighed 26 kilograms and moved on six wheels. Vikram targeted a 16 km² landing region identified from imagery captured by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter's Orbiter High-Resolution Camera.

  Radioisotope heating units, developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, could not be installed on Vikram or Pragyan. Adding them would have increased the spacecraft's mass too much. Without them, neither spacecraft could survive the lunar night, limiting operational life to 14 Earth days. Project director P. Veeramuthuvel said ISRO was already collaborating with the Department of Atomic Energy on nuclear heating technology for future deep-space missions.

• 5. Eleven Minutes Down

  ›

  Chandrayaan-3 launched aboard an LVM3-M4 rocket on the 14th of July 2023 at 09:05 UTC from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. It entered an initial orbit with a low point of 170 kilometres and a high point of 36,500 kilometres above Earth. A series of Earth-bound manoeuvres extended its orbit through late July until, on the 31st of July, ISRO performed a trans-lunar injection sending the spacecraft toward the Moon. On the 5th of August, a lunar orbit insertion brought Chandrayaan-3 into orbit around the Moon. The manoeuvre was conducted from ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bengaluru. On the 17th of August, Vikram separated from the propulsion module and began its independent approach to the surface.

  On the 23rd of August, as Vikram reached the lowest point of its orbit, its four engines fired at 30 kilometres above the surface in a braking manoeuvre. After 11.5 minutes of controlled descent, the lander was 7.2 kilometres above the surface. It maintained that altitude for roughly 10 seconds, then used eight smaller thrusters to rotate from a horizontal to a vertical orientation while continuing its descent. Vikram slowed to approximately 150 metres above the surface and hovered there for about 30 seconds to locate an optimal landing spot. It then descended and contacted the lunar surface. ISRO chairman S. Somanath's declaration reached the watching world immediately: "India is on the Moon."

• 6. What the Surface Revealed

  ›

  On the 29th of August 2023, ISRO announced that Pragyan's laser spectrometer had "unambiguously" confirmed the presence of sulfur in the lunar soil near the south pole. The detection came through first-ever in-situ measurements at that latitude. Sulfur had been found in Apollo programme samples taken from elsewhere on the Moon, but it had never been measured at the south pole through direct surface analysis. Noah Petro, a project scientist at NASA, described Pragyan's findings as "a tremendous accomplishment." The rover also detected aluminium, calcium, iron, chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon, and oxygen. ISRO said it was still searching for hydrogen when surface operations wound down.

  ChaSTE, the thermal instrument on the Vikram lander, returned data that surprised its own team. ISRO scientist BH Darukesha said the temperature range of 70 degrees Celsius near the surface was "not expected." Research published in March 2025 placed the peak surface temperature at the landing site at 355 Kelvin. That was roughly 25 degrees above the approximately 330 Kelvin predicted by earlier remote sensing. The discrepancy arose partly from ChaSTE's placement: the probe had penetrated a sun-facing slope tilted roughly 6 degrees toward the equator. A flat-surface sensor about a metre away recorded approximately 332 Kelvin, consistent with orbiter-based predictions.

  On the 31st of August, the RAMBHA instrument provided the first in-situ plasma measurements from the lunar poles. Initial readings showed electron densities between 5 and 30 million electrons per cubic metre. As the lunar day progressed, those readings climbed to between 380 and 600 electrons per cubic centimetre, far higher than estimates derived from Chandrayaan-2's orbital radio occultation measurements. The electrons registered kinetic temperatures between 3,000 and 8,000 Kelvin. On the same date, ISRO released seismic data from the ILSA instrument, including readings from a presumed natural event on the 26th of August that was suspected to be a moonquake.

  The APXS spectrometer on the Pragyan rover, developed by the Physical Research Laboratory, measured volatile element concentrations at the landing site. Those measurements indicated the presence of primitive lunar mantle material, a type otherwise absent from existing lunar sample collections. The finding made the south pole landing site a promising location for a future sample return mission.

• 7. Reactions and Awards

  ›

  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the ISRO team at the Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bengaluru following the landing. He announced that the Vikram lander's touchdown point would be known as Statio Shiv Shakti and declared the 23rd of August as National Space Day. Project director P. Veeramuthuvel described the moment as one of "immense satisfaction." Mission director S. Mohana Kumar called Chandrayaan-3 a "team effort." Former ISRO chief K. Sivan, under whose tenure Chandrayaan-2 was launched, called the outcome "sweet news" and said the team had spent four years waiting for it. Speaking to India Today, Chairman S. Somanath reflected on the mission ahead: "We learnt a lot from our failure and corrected it. It's now 14 days of work and we have to conduct experiments." Google marked the following day with a homepage doodle featuring the Chandrayaan-3 lander on the 24th of August.

  NASA administrator Bill Nelson welcomed ISRO to the group of agencies that had soft-landed on the Moon. Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, said he was "thoroughly impressed" and praised India's first soft landing on another celestial body. The Kremlin quoted President Vladimir Putin congratulating India's president and prime minister; he called the mission "a big step forward in space exploration." South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa framed the success as a shared moment for the BRICS nations.

  The Exploration Museum presented ISRO with the Leif Erikson Lunar Prize in 2023. The Aviation Week Laureates Award was accepted at the Indian Embassy in Washington. On the 8th of April 2024, at the Space Symposium in Colorado, India's Consul General D.C. Manjunath accepted the John L. "Jack" Swigert Jr. Award for Space Exploration on behalf of the mission team. The International Astronautical Federation gave Chandrayaan-3 the World Space Award at the 75th International Astronautical Congress in Milan. On the 21st of May 2026, at the AIAA ASCEND conference in Washington, D.C., the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics presented Chandrayaan-3 with the Goddard Astronautics Award, in recognition of its landing near the lunar south pole and the chemical element detections that followed.

• 8. A Mission Extended

  ›

  On the 3rd of September 2023, before the lunar night fell, Vikram fired its engines one more time. The brief hop lifted the lander 40 centimetres above the surface and moved it 50 centimetres to the side. Exhaust gases blew away roughly 3 centimetres of lunar regolith from the landing point. The instruments and rover ramp were retracted for the test and redeployed afterward; the hop was designed to demonstrate capabilities that future sample return missions would require. On the same day, Pragyan was placed in sleep mode after completing all of its assigned tasks.

  ChaSTE was redeployed in the lander's final hours to measure temperatures as the lunar day faded. At the new resting position, the probe found a two-layer structure in the top 6.5 centimetres of the lunar subsurface. The upper 3 centimetres conducted heat more efficiently than the material below. Deeper, conductivity fell and cohesion rose from 300 to 1,600 Pascals, with the soil becoming twice as dense. ChaSTE also recorded a temperature drop of 60 degrees Celsius during lunar twilight, which at the landing site lasted over 57 minutes. On the 22nd of September, the lander and rover missed their reactivation calls. The on-board electronics were not designed to withstand the minus 120 degrees Celsius of the lunar night. By the 28th of September, neither had responded.

  The propulsion module had retained over 100 kilograms of fuel after one month in lunar orbit. ISRO chose to use that reserve rather than allow the module to drift. On the 9th of October, engineers raised its apogee from 150 to 5,112 kilometres, extending the orbital period from 2.1 to 7.2 hours. A trans-Earth injection on the 13th of October targeted an orbit of approximately 380,000 by 180,000 kilometres. After four lunar flybys, the module crossed out of the Moon's gravitational sphere on the 10th of November. Its first perigee crossing came on the 22nd of November 2023 at an altitude of roughly 154,000 kilometres. The module was shifted to a high Earth orbit, where it continues operating the SHAPE instrument, observing Earth in near-infrared wavelengths. In November 2025, it made two additional passes near the Moon. The first, on the 6th, passed 3,740 kilometres from the surface. The second, on the 11th, brought it within 4,537 kilometres and shifted the module's orbital inclination from 34 to 22 degrees. During this period, the module was briefly misidentified as a near-Earth asteroid and given the provisional designation CE1M9G2. On the 12th of December 2023, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter directed a laser beam at a small retroreflector on Vikram's surface and received a return signal. The 20-gram passive instrument was designed to function on the lunar surface for several decades.