A few days ago, India taught us a valuable lesson, which is that what seemed impossible for others, could be possible for us!
For ages, the moon has always captivated our imaginations. But it wasn’t until recently that we actually set foot on it. First, we sent robots, and then we sent people. The Soviet Union was the first to deliberately crash a spacecraft into the moon in 1959, and the U.S. did the same thing in 1962. Other countries have also intentionally crashed their spacecrafts on the moon, like Japan, the European Space Agency, India, and China. But now, space agencies have figured out how to do soft landings. After their initial crash landings, several countries have successfully used braking rockets to softly land on the lunar surface and conduct scientific experiments. The Soviet Union was the first to do this in 1966, followed by the U.S., and China.
Just last week, the Russian Luna 25 and the Indian Chandrayaan-3 missions attempted soft landings at the moon’s south pole, a region of interest because of the occurrence of water ice in permanently shadowed areas around it.
Unfortunately, Russia’s mission failed, but India became the fourth nation to succeed in a soft landing on the moon.