The story so far: Scripting history, the Chandrayaan-3 lander landed in the south polar region of the moon on August 23 at 6:03 pm IST, making India the first country to successfully soft-land in that area. The Vikram lander along with the Pragyan rover have since completed a small suite of surface tests. China’s Yutu-2 rover is the only other such instrument currently active on the moon.
Chandrayaan-3 is India’s second attempt to land on the moon. The first was Chandrayaan-2, whose lander module crashed on the moon in 2019.
China had landed a lander-rover module in the South Pole-Aitken Basin (this is not as close to the south polar region as Chandrayaan) in 2018. Both are operational as of date.
