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India’s lunar triumph
There is now another country capable of dramatic success in space.
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People wave India's national flags in celebration of the successful lunar landing of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, in New Delhi, on Aug 23.
PHOTO: AFP
The Economist
It was fairly obvious that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was confident. You don’t include a window showing the Indian prime minister’s real-time reaction in the live YouTube feed of your lunar landing unless you think you are going to give him something to smile about.
Even so, the poise with which Chandrayaan-3’s “automatic landing sequence” brought the spacecraft down on to the Moon’s surface was striking. The spacecraft’s trajectory dropped smoothly from thousands of kilometres an hour to walking pace, before a last little cheeky hover as the system checked the landing site and then settled itself down onto the lunar surface. India did not just land its robot on the Moon. It did it with style.
