The moon rover of India’s Chandrayaan-3 exited the spacecraft on Thursday morning to begin its exploration of the lunar surface, the country’s space agency said on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The spacecraft landed on the unexplored south pole of the moon on Wednesday evening, days after Russia’s Luna-25 failed, making India the first country to achieve that feat. “The Ch-3 Rover ramped down from the Lander and India took a walk on the moon!” the Indian Space Research Organisation said in its message.
Accomplished with a budget of about 6.15 billion Indian rupees ($74.58 million), this was India’s second attempt to touch down on the moon. A previous mission in 2019, Chandrayaan-2, successfully deployed an orbiter but its lander crashed.—Reuters
