Google Doodle celebrates India’s historic feat of landing Chandrayaan-3 on Moon’s South Pole

Google doodle showed the spacecraft navigating around the orbit of the Moon and then landing on its surface.

On August 23 at 6.04 pm, Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander landed gently on the Moon’s surface near its South Pole.

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India’s historic feat of becoming the first country to land on the Moon’s South Pole was celebrated with a doodle by search engine Google. The American multinational technology company celebrated with a doodle showing the spacecraft navigating around the orbit of the Moon and then landing on its surface. The Moon appears to be pleased with the landing of the spacecraft Chandrayaan-3.

On August 23 at 6.04 pm, Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander landed gently on the Moon’s surface near its South Pole, after 17 minutes of powered descent, becoming the first spacecraft to land in the unexplored lunar region.

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With India’s successful soft landing on the Moon, it has joined an exclusive club of countries to have landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface, joining the United States, China and the Soviet Union.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota Range on July 14. It successfully touched down near the lunar South Pole region on Wednesday.

The Moon’s South Pole has been an area of heightened interest for space explorers as they suspected the existence of ice deposits located inside permanently shadowed craters. Chandrayaan-3 has now confirmed this prediction to be true, it wrote in the blogpost.

After reaching this historic feat, Chandrayaan-3’s first message was, “India, I reached my destination and you too!” Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) stating, “The success belongs to all of humanity… It will help moon missions by other countries in the future. I’m confident that all countries in the world can all aspire for the moon and beyond. The sky is not the limit!”