“India is on the Moon,” declared Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, the chair of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft’s Vikram lander touched down shortly after 18:04 local India time (12:34 BST) on 23rd August 2023. It landed near the Moon's south pole—the first time this has been accomplished. Scientists believe the region could hold precious elements and vital reserves of frozen water in permanently shadowed craters. India's achievement comes just days after Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the Moon. Vikram's successful landing marks India’s emergence as a space power. It is only the fourth nation, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China, to achieve a soft landing on the Moon. People across India were glued to their TV screens as the spacecraft descended to the lunar surface.

​​​​​​​24th August 2023
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In the final few minutes before touchdown, Vikram (the lander is named after Indian space programme pioneer Vikram Sarabhai) executed a complex manoeuvre, using its engines to slow down from a speed of 1.68 kilometres per second to nearly zero. With the help of eight thrusters it successfully turned from a horizontal to a vertical position. In 2019 Chandrayaan-2's lander failed to complete this manoeuvre and crashed into the surface during the final braking phase. It meant that success this time was all the sweeter. The heart-stopping moment was followed by jubilation all over India. ISRO scientists congratulated each other on what they had achieved.

Vikram and Pragyaan are carrying scientific instruments which will help analyse the regolith (the loose particles amassed over billions of years that blanket the bedrock), the atmosphere above the lunar surface and any tectonic activity below.

Chandrayaan-3 (the name means “moon craft” in Sanskrit) took off from Sriharikota in southern India on 14th July. It took much longer to reach the Moon than the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s. This is because the spacecraft uses much less powerful rockets, gaining speed instead from repeated orbits of the Earth before setting out on its lunar journey.

​​​​​​​On 5th August, ISRO successfully placed the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbit around the Moon. This operation, called lunar-orbit insertion (LOI), was carried out from the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) located in Bengaluru. After a series of orbits, Vikram separated from the propulsion module to begin the next phase of the mission on 17th August.