Chandrayaan-3: How to watch India’s historic Moon mission to land probe on uncharted lunar south pole

No country has ever managed a soft landing on the lunar south pole – yet

India’s historic Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission – expected to land a probe on the uncharted lunar south pole – will be livestreamed by the country’s space agency.

A successful landing will make India the first country to touch down on this part of the Moon believed to hold coveted pockets of water ice. It will also make India the fourth country overall to soft land a probe on the Moon, following similar feats by the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

No country has ever managed a soft landing on the lunar south pole – made more difficult by the region’s extremely cratered and rugged terrain. And if the mission’s Pragyan rover manages to find water ice on the lunar surface, that could mean setting another historic precedent that could spur nations to extract fuel and oxygen from the Moon and possibly set the stage for future missions to Mars.

The live telecast of the landing event will begin at 5.20pm on India Standard Time (11.50am GMT/UTC) on Wednesday, noted the country’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

The mission’s lander is expected to make a soft landing on the lunar south pole at about 6.04pm local time (12.34pm GMT/UTC).

Click here to see the Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission livestream event.

The space agency also said in a statement: “The live coverage will be available via multiple platforms, including the Isro Website, YouTube, Isro’s Facebook page.”

The Moon’s south pole has become a region of interest among scientists in recent years because of studies showing it contains traces of water ice in its shadowed craters.

The historic feat of finding such ice could raise hopes for establishing a longer-term presence on the Moon, and aid in future space exploration missions to other planets in the Solar System, including Mars.

The latest country that failed in its attempts to land on the south pole was Russia, that had launched its first Moon landing mission in five decades.

As Russia’s Luna-25’s spacecraft attempted to make a soft landing near the lunar south pole as recently as Sunday, the probe crashed onto the Moon due to an “abnormal situation,” according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” the Russian agency said.

Experts said the Russian lunar spacecraft fired its engines for too long during a key manoeuvre towards landing.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 is also a follow-up mission four years after Isro’s first unsuccessful attempt to land a rover on the lunar surface in 2019.

During the descent in September 2019, the Chandrayaan-2 mission lander diverged from its intended path and lost communication with operators on Earth about a mile-and-a-half above the Moon’s surface.

Commenting on the tense moments before the ongoing mission’s landing, Isro chairman S Somnath told local media that “all preparations” have been done and “all systems have performed as we needed them to until this stage”.

The Indian space agency hopes the crucial last moments of landing, known as the “20 minutes of terror”, go as planned.

In this key manoeuvre, the mission’s Vikram lander will start hurtling towards the lunar surface at a velocity of 1.68km per second and will then have to slow down by firing its engines to align vertically to the Moon’s surface.

It was during this final phase that India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission tumbled and crashed onto the Moon in 2019.

“The last 20 minutes of descending from the lunar orbit to the lunar surface are going to be the most challenging moment in the history of this mission,” former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair told news agency ANI.

Once successfully landed, the mission will help Isro make a number of scientific measurements on the lunar surface and from orbit.

An instrument called Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) will measure the Moon’s surface thermal properties and another instrument will study lunar seismic activity (ILSA).

The Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (Rambha) instrument will study the Moon’s gas and plasma environment, and a laser device provided by Nasa will help conduct lunar ranging studies.