Four years after the Chandrayaan-2 mission ended in part failure, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is making another attempt to land on the Moon.
Later this evening, the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Vikram lander, currently in orbit around the Moon, will begin a slow landing procedure in the evening.
The landing sequence will begin around 5:45 pm and will last for around a quarter of an hour, a period that a former Isro chief has described as “15 minutes of terror.
If all goes well, Vikram will land in an area near the lunar South Pole. Shortly after, the lander will open its doors to deploy Pragyaan — a six-wheeled rover the size of a coffee table — on the surface of the moon.
This would make India only the fourth country in the world — after the United States, Russia, and China — to operate a rover on the Moon and the first to land near the south pole.
