India on Wednesday not only completed its first mission to the moon, 54 years after the U.S. first touched down, but it landed on the moon’s south pole—a feat no other country has been able to accomplish.
The mission’s success comes days after a Russian spacecraft crashed into the lunar south pole. The two countries had been racing to put an unmanned spacecraft in that region after scientists discovered traces of water there. The elements of water—hydrogen and oxygen—are essential components to rocket fuel, so harvesting them on the moon could allow spacecrafts to top off their tanks for further exploration, according to the Institute of Physics. The existence of water on the moon could also help sustain astronauts in space for long periods of time, providing a drinking source and supporting the growth of plants for food, it reported. India placed a rover in the region to collect data on the elemental composition of the soil and rocks, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
“This success belongs to all of humanity,” India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, said during a webcast of the event.
The feat by the country of 1.4 billion people comes at a time when private, for-profit companies have stolen the spotlight in space exploration. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a target of sending humans to Mars (though Musk’s timeline is in flux), and NASA is currently completely reliant on SpaceX rockets to get its human crews into space.
India is increasingly becoming a major player in the space world, with this mission cementing its place in history. Previously, the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union (now Russia) all landed on the moon, though the U.S. is still the only country to touch down with a crew. The prospect of gaining access to water on the moon means these countries and more will be racing for a slice of the action. A new space race has already begun, and India has more up its sleeve.
The mission has been 20 years in the making. Then–Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced his ambitions for India to go to the moon during his Independence Day speech in 2003. Its first mission was five years later, when the ISRO successfully placed a ship in the moon’s orbit for 312 days. It then attempted to land and deploy a rover in 2019, but an error in the software caused the landing spacecraft and rover to crash. The organization improved the tech from its second mission for the Chandrayaan-3—the third and most recent trip—including adding stronger legs on the landing machine, removing an engine, and lengthening the energy-supplying solar panels, according to the Times of India. The country also became the first to enter Mars’s orbit on the first try in 2014.
The ISRO’s future space plans largely revolve around the moon—literally. It is preparing a joint flight with Japan, for which India will supply the landing machine. The two countries first agreed to work together in 2017. Japan will provide the unmanned launch spacecraft and the rover, which will explore the moon’s south pole. There is no set date for launch.
India also wants to send a manned spacecraft to the moon. The ship, which can hold three passengers, was originally planned to launch in 2021, but delays have pushed that date. Jitendra Singh, India’s union minister of state for science and technology, wants it to take off in 2024, but he plans to send two unmanned spaceships first to test for safety, the Economic Times reported. A successful landing with passengers would make India second only to the U.S. to complete such an operation.
Even as India sends its tricolor flag to remote extraterrestrial locations, a thriving private space industry is also taking root within the country. According to a recent New York Times article, there are at least 140 registered space startups in India. And while the ISRO budget was less than $1.5 billion in the past fiscal year, the private space sector is currently worth more than $6 billion, according to the report.
