Chandrayaan-3

Mission Profile

Chandrayaan-3 is India's third lunar mission, launched on 14 July 2023 aboard an LVM3 rocket, successfully landing the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover in the Moon's south polar region on 23 August 2023. This made India the fourth nation to successfully land on the Moon and the first to soft-land near the lunar south pole, a region of intense scientific interest for its permanently shadowed craters potentially containing water ice. The Pragyan rover traversed 100 meters of lunar surface, analyzing soil composition with its onboard spectrometers and confirming the presence of sulfur and other elements in the south polar regolith. Chandrayaan-3's success following the Chandrayaan-2 lander failure established India as a major space power with demonstrated deep space exploration capability.