The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) massive success with the Chandrayaan-3 mission, which became the first one to land so close to the lunar south pole before going to sleep, seems to have ruffled some feathers. Chinese scientist Ouyang Ziyuan has questioned the achievements of the mission. Ziyuan, who is lauded as the father of China’s lunar exploration program, said the Chandrayaan-3 landing site is nowhere close to the pole, reports Bloomberg. The Chandrayaan-3 mission landed at 69.37 degrees south latitude and 32.35 degrees east longitude. The lunar south pole is generally defined as being at a latitude of around 89.45 degrees. “It’s wrong,” said Ziyuan, referring to claims that the Indian mission landed near the lunar south pole. “The landing site of Chandrayaan-3 is not at the lunar south pole, not in the lunar south pole region, nor is it near the lunar south pole region,” Bloomberg quotes him as saying. Irrespective of Ziyuan’s opinion, Chandrayaan-3 went much further south than any other lunar mission in the past. Russia’s attempt to do something similar ended in failure as the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed onto the lunar surface in August. Also, while Ziyuan’s statements seem like they came out of the mouth of a seasoned politician instead of a celebrated scientist, it would be a mistake to assume that his attitude is mirrored by the scientific community in China. Chinese Communist Party-owned Global Times reported Chandrayaan-3’s success with much enthusiasm. Many Chinese experts hailed India’s feat as representing the growing significance of developing countries in space. Many also called for India and China to abandon their geopolitical rivalry to collaborate in space. "The spirit of science transcends national boundaries, as it ultimately strives for the well-being and progress of all humanity. We appreciate every effort in this course, regardless of whether it's successful," Hu Shisheng, director of the Institute for South Asian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told Global Times. Of course, this does not mean that experts in China accept any sort of superiority on India’s side. In the same article, Pang Zhihao, a Beijing-based senior space expert asserted that China is far more advanced than India in various aspects. He pointed out China’s ability to send orbiters and landers directly into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit instead of using a longer fuel-efficient route like Chandrayaan-3. He attributed this to the limited capacity of India’s launch vehicles. While both nations happily or begrudgingly admit the other’s excellent space exploration capabilities, it is tough to predict whether they will actually collaborate in space. Right now, that scenario seems unlikely. The South China Morning Post in August reported that a team of scientists trying to send a scientific payload to China’s Tiangong space station had “hit a wall” as they did not receive an export permit from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. The team applied for a permit to export the Spectroscopic Investigations of Nebular Gas (SING) payload to China a year ago but has not yet received it. The China Manned Space Agency and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs had jointly selected SING to be one of the nine international experiments carried out on board Tiangong. With that in the background, ISRO's Aditya L1 mission left Earth's sphere of influence and is now headed for the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1). In other news, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration postponed the mission to the asteroid Psyche. The space agency said that the change will allow its teams to complete verifications of the parameters used to control the spacecraft’s nitrogen cold gas thrusters. While that was the reason cited by NASA, there was a good chance that the mission may not have been able to launch on October 5 anyway because of the possibility of the US government shutting down. But when the Psyche mission does launch, it will be the first space mission in history to go to a metal-rich world instead of one dominated by other gasses or rocks. Scientists are hoping that observations of the asteroid will help them answer questions about how the solar system was formed.
