As Chandrayaan-3 will attempt to land on the uncharted south pole of Moon tomorrow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join the landing programme virtually from South Africa, where he is on a three-day official visit to attend the 15th BRICS summit.
Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) – lander Vikram and rover Pragyan – is scheduled to make a touch down near the lunar south pole at 6.04 pm on Wednesday, days after the failure of a Russian vehicle trying to achieve the same feat. Success for Chandrayaan-3 will make India the fourth country to master the technology of soft-landing on the lunar surface after the US, China and the erstwhile Soviet Union.
All systems on an Indian spacecraft heading to the moon are working “perfectly” and no contingencies are anticipated on the landing day, the country’s space agency said on Monday.
